Episode 196: The Ambassador Bridge

what if a weird guy owned a bridge. a troll even follow josh on bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/bosh.worstpossible.worldlisten to worst of all possible worlds: https://www.worstpossible.world/listen to ill conceived: https://illconceivedpodcast.com/ Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/ Send us stuff! our address:Well There's Your Podcasting CompanyPO Box 26929 Philadelphia, PA 19134DO NOT SEND US LETTER BOMBS thanks in advance in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03November Kelly?

  I was, I was saying earlier before we started recording that I, I've been sort of, like watching some YouTube videos on similar topics as ours to of course steal their ideas and incorporate them into our own.

• 0:15Justin Roczniak?

  Much in the same way that you stole $200 from me.

• 0:18November Kelly?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. And those guys, they have like production values and granted, like we're, you know, a podcast first that is also on YouTube and they're like YouTube channels, but like they've got like animations and shit like, there's this one guy, really interesting, wish I remember the name so I could shout him out as if someone like 10 times our followers needs a shout out, but like, he was talking about like how the fucking Romanian gold mining industry like poisoned the Danube, went out to Romania, walked around, kicked cancer causing dust around. That's like, I'm sort of glad that we're not doing that.

• 0:53Justin Roczniak?

  Don't have to do that. You don't have to wear a respirator. You don't have to do any of that. What's really embarrassing is when those high production value channels, like they make this expensive animation about something and they're wrong.

• 1:03November Kelly?

  Yeah, no, that is true. That, that's really funny.

• 1:06Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that happens pretty frequently. At least when we're wrong, we didn't put too much effort into it.

• 1:11Liam McAnderson?

  We're commonly wrong.

• 1:12November Kelly?

  I think, I think the thing is it inculcates a kind of healthy skepticism in the listener to be like, you know, these, these people that have, you know, the expertise that, you know, not being able to activate windows can grant you.

• 1:27Liam McAnderson?

  He knows how to do it. He just doesn't want to.

• 1:30Justin Roczniak?

  No, I don't, I don't want to give money to that company anymore. I don't.

• 1:35November Kelly?

  You're right to do it. I mean, they're on the BDS like priority list. I'm pretty sure.

• 1:39Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly. That's why I can't play Minecraft anymore.

• 1:42November Kelly?

  Oh, god damn.

• 1:43Speaker 03

  It's sort of like one, one weird trick for developing an audience that isn't going to be insanely pedantic of everything that you do is just, they just sort of assume that you're only like three quarters correct generally.

• 1:54November Kelly?

  And then you get?

• 1:55Speaker 03

  Six, six, six, seven.

• 1:57Justin Roczniak?

  Six, seven, yeah.

• 1:58Liam McAnderson?

  Six, seven.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Six, seven. Alright, cool.

• 2:01Justin Roczniak?

  Vaguely in that area, yeah.

• 2:03Liam McAnderson?

  We are bad people.

• 2:05November Kelly?

  I don't dispute this.

• 2:06Speaker 03

  No, I'm a good person. Yeah.

• 2:08November Kelly?

  A good person would forgive me for like taking those $200 from you.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, that was just, that was just theft. I can't forgive theft.

• 2:16Liam McAnderson?

  Well, we had a good run. I, I have finished my tor- oh, I broke my pen. I have finished my torrent, so I am ready to record.

• 2:22November Kelly?

  God fucking damn.

• 2:24Justin Roczniak?

  Have you not been recording this whole time?

• 2:26Liam McAnderson?

  No, I've been recording.

• 2:28November Kelly?

  Just like in a sort of unready to do it basis. You know, now you're ready.

• 2:32Liam McAnderson?

  Like, ah, I guess. Yeah, I got, I got Seinfeld and Community.

• 2:36Justin Roczniak?

  Nice.

• 2:37Liam McAnderson?

  Also, November, you were invited to the Plex server. I have your, your.

• 2:41November Kelly?

  Oh, god damn it. Okay.

• 2:42Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, it's just sitting there. Oh, you and Noah. You and Noah. Noah was like, oh, can you invite me to your Plex server? Six or seven times. And I'm.

• 2:50Justin Roczniak?

  Six or seven?

• 2:55Justin Roczniak?

  This is the coldest open we ever done. It's, it's getting colder by the.

• 2:58November Kelly?

  Ice cold. We will cut all of this fucking amok collapse of an opening. Please take us in.

• 3:05Justin Roczniak?

  We're gonna, we're gonna have to measure this in degrees Kelvin.

• 3:09Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, my atoms, they're so cold.

• 3:11Justin Roczniak?

  Or worse. Rankin. That's, that's something for another episode.

• 3:16November Kelly?

  The illusion of free choice. You have to measure temperature using a Scottish guy.

• 3:21Justin Roczniak?

  Is Rankin Scottish?

• 3:23November Kelly?

  Yeah. Yeah, 100%.

• 3:25Justin Roczniak?

  I didn't know that.

• 3:26November Kelly?

  Rankin, very Scottish name. Like, um, you're like Rankin Kelvin Celsius, so Swedish, and then Fahrenheit, German?

• 3:34Liam McAnderson?

  I'm guessing German, yes.

• 3:35November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 3:36Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. So what if a Swede, what if, what if a Swedish man was Scottish, or what if a German man was Scottish?

• 3:43November Kelly?

  Horrendous car crash of accents.

• 3:46Justin Roczniak?

  Folks, it's welcome to Well, There's Your Problem.

• 3:50Liam McAnderson?

  Nailed it.

• 3:55Justin Roczniak?

  It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides. I'm Justin Rosneck. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay, go.

• 4:05November Kelly?

  I'm November Kelly. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are she and her. Yay, Liam.

• 4:10Liam McAnderson?

  Yay, Liam. Hi, I'm Liam McAnderson. My pronouns are he and him. I'm the person talking right now. And we have a guest. You may be wondering where Victoria is. She's, I ate her. She went for a run, she and she, she, she fell into the hole.

• 4:23November Kelly?

  These are the consequences of heavy, uh, this, these are the consequences of healthy living. You go for a run, you get eaten.

• 4:29Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 4:30Justin Roczniak?

  Well, the other, the other thing is I was gonna go visit June. Um, but the subway caught on fire.

• 4:38Liam McAnderson?

  Yes, it did.

• 4:38Justin Roczniak?

  So it's a good thing I didn't do that.

• 4:41November Kelly?

  Signs, signs and portents, and we have a guest.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  Yes, I am the guest. Hello. Uh, my name is Josh Borman. I am the person who is talking right now and my pronouns are he and also him.

• 4:51November Kelly?

  The Josh of all possible Borman.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Very true, very true.

• 4:55November Kelly?

  Man who does not have $200.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  I don't, but.

• 4:59Liam McAnderson?

  What happened to it?

• 5:00Speaker 03

  It, given that you owe me $200 Nova, it's, it's kind of funny that I keep, I've, I think I've faced you down four times now over the course of the past week or so. And every single time I just look at you and you just sit there and you, you, you taunt me.

• 5:14November Kelly?

  I do, I do, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get those dollars out in cash from like a bureau de change. And just sort of fans and do like a money spread, you know?

• 5:23Speaker 03

  Oh, just all one dollar bills.

• 5:25Liam McAnderson?

  Like you're an aspiring rapper.

• 5:26November Kelly?

  200 of them.

• 5:27Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 5:29November Kelly?

  You don't know that I'm not an aspiring rapper. I can aspire to be anything I want to be.

• 5:32Liam McAnderson?

  I didn't say, I didn't, didn't say that you could be. I would love to hear your mixtape. I assume it's straight, straight gas.

• 5:38November Kelly?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, no, there's, there's, there's bars in here.

• 5:42Justin Roczniak?

  And what we see in front of us is a very normal bridge.

• 5:48November Kelly?

  This is, this is nice. This is stylish. I like the blue. I like the font.

• 5:52Liam McAnderson?

  I like how it hasn't come down yet.

• 5:54Justin Roczniak?

  I actually, I really like the ambassador bridge, like aesthetically, yeah. We're talking about the ambassador bridge today, folks. It's, it's so stupid.

• 6:04November Kelly?

  This almost has like a bonus energy already, you know, like you should be paying to be here.

• 6:11Liam McAnderson?

  You could cut news and we could do it as a bonus.

• 6:13November Kelly?

  No, we gotta talk about the news. There's so much news.

• 6:16Liam McAnderson?

  We gotta talk about how they nuked Glasgow, question mark?

• 6:20Justin Roczniak?

  Well, no, hold on, hold on a second. First, we have to do the goddamn news. Oh, hold on, I have to do this.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  Let's see if this works.

• 6:30November Kelly?

  This is.

• 6:30Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, that's so easy, isn't it? Oh, please.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:37Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, no, we're, we're, we're, here we go.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:41Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 6:42November Kelly?

  Yeah, so, well, there's your problem with 10,000 losses, share Discord, because I'm cheap and... Yeah, the other fault of this is that, um, this is, this doesn't fade out.

• 6:54Speaker 03

  I told you.

• 6:54November Kelly?

  It doesn't fade out.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  Ross, Ross, I told you, you just gotta click it a second time and it'll fade out.

• 7:00November Kelly?

  Ross.

• 7:00Justin Roczniak?

  I told you.

• 7:01November Kelly?

  How do I?

• 7:02Speaker 03

  I told you.

• 7:03November Kelly?

  I kind of, I kind of like hearing the whole thing, you know, it's, it's, it's nice, you know, getting sort of reintroduced to it. Um, yeah, so.

• 7:10Justin Roczniak?

  To, uh, to quote, to, to, uh, vaguely misquote, um, my mom's middle school, uh, principal.

• 7:22Justin Roczniak?

  Students and faculty, sexy coffee is on fire. We have reason to believe it is burning.

• 7:30November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah. I, I hate to say it.

• 7:33Justin Roczniak?

  Let my plans grow. Oh, thank God.

• 7:34November Kelly?

  But because of the left's intolerance of free speech and the changes in our society, um, we have lost sexy coffee in Glasgow.

• 7:45Justin Roczniak?

  How could you say that? There's flavor for days. It's right there on the right.

• 7:48November Kelly?

  Ah, it's true. So, um, yeah, Glasgow has been destroyed. It's over. I'm, I'm personally, uh, recording this. I sound different, as you may have noticed. I, I sound different because I'm recording this from around a sort of barrel full of burning embers.

• 8:01Justin Roczniak?

  It's actually an AI recreation of November Kelly.

• 8:04November Kelly?

  Yeah, we got real good at that. Very strict instructions, like Scott Adams, that in the event of my death, in a sort of like vape shop fire situation, to use AI to make me continue to podcast forever in a kind of hellish non-existence. Um, yeah, so there's this, uh, there used to be this vape shop, uh, like a sort of illegal, unregistered vape shop, um, directly next to Central Station, one of the, like, two main stations in Glasgow and the, like, sole link to England.

• 8:36Justin Roczniak?

  The, the, the big one, the important one.

• 8:38November Kelly?

  Yep, yep. Nice architecture, as Justin, you know.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  I, I have fond memories of showing up there for a train that ended up being completely fucking canceled, thanks to ongoing rail strikes.

• 8:50November Kelly?

  Yeah, well, so what if much more of that?

• 8:52Justin Roczniak?

  To have a nice time on a Voyager, leaving from that station.

• 8:58November Kelly?

  Yeah, and you may yet be because this vape shop, it turns out, was maybe not the most successful or safe or sort of reasonable steward of a bunch of lithium ion batteries.

• 9:12Justin Roczniak?

  Learn to dip.

• 9:14November Kelly?

  Yeah, and so we don't know exactly what caused the fire, but big electrical fire.

• 9:20Justin Roczniak?

  The big stack of lithium ion batteries labeled careful.

• 9:22November Kelly?

  I'm suspecting so. Yeah, I mean, there are, there is a sort of video of a guy's trying fruitlessly to sort of extinguish it as like more of them explode. It looks like the opening of Children of Man. It's grim. I, and so this has now taken out the whole building next to the station, which includes the bafflingly named Sexy Coffee and Blue Lagoon Fish and Chip Shop, which also burned down itself last year. So it's just really a sort of cursed block. It's a really weird vibes up there.

• 9:54Justin Roczniak?

  It's sexy coffee like a Hooters, but for coffee.

• 9:57November Kelly?

  So Sexy Coffee, the deal is it's a coffee shop with like coffee themed cocktails and it's open late.

• 10:03Justin Roczniak?

  What?

• 10:05November Kelly?

  Yeah, it's, it's something that doesn't feel like it should be in an English speaking country. It feels like it should be like you're in Romania, like drunk off your ass and you run into.

• 10:12Justin Roczniak?

  Sexy Coffee.

• 10:14November Kelly?

  And like, and like Bucharest, you know?

• 10:17Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. You're gonna go to, you're gonna have espresso cock, what is it? Espresso martini? I, I looked through the pictures and they got a, it does look like a nice espresso martini. I will say that.

• 10:28November Kelly?

  So. The problem is, I, I, I never went into Sexy Coffee because I was put off by the name. No, I never went to Sexy Coffee because I'm like, what am I going to go to somewhere called Sexy Coffee for? You know? But so the station is maybe fine, maybe not, but it is closed for like indefinite.

• 10:48Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, kidding. Yeah. I was about to say, they must be having, I, I would not want to be working for Great British Railways at this point.

• 10:58November Kelly?

  No.

• 10:58Justin Roczniak?

  Just on account of.

• 11:01Justin Roczniak?

  I'm sure the train shed probably bore into the mason masonry of this building, right?

• 11:09November Kelly?

  Yeah, I believe so. And because it's got like a big vaulted glass roof, you don't want to let people back in there without being certain that they're not going to get a sort of Victorian leaded glass pane through the, you know, side of the head.

• 11:23Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah. Cause then, you know, you not only do you die, you also get stupider. Yeah.

• 11:29November Kelly?

  Yeah, trying not to get Phineas Gage, trying not to get Final Destination. Um, the actual like building itself, which was very historic, you know, 19th century building is, as you see, just completely collapsed into the street.

• 11:41Justin Roczniak?

  I was surprised how bad this was, like from the fire alone, you know, this is.

• 11:47November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 11:48Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it gives you like sort of some sense of perspective, like gee, fire, fire is really bad, guys.

• 11:55November Kelly?

  Fire is really bad. And like, this was a really weird thing to let happen directly next to a really strategic sort of, uh, site as well.

• 12:04Justin Roczniak?

  High value property. Yeah.

• 12:07Liam McAnderson?

  High value target.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  Well, this, this kind of reminds me of, uh, in New York, this was like a, maybe decade, decade and a half ago. When there was like a Palms Frits shop that blew up in the East Village of New York City.

• 12:20November Kelly?

  Oh, that dates it.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Um, and it was directly adjacent to like this building that had a theater, like it was like a bar with a theater in the basement where I produced some shit. Uh, back when I was still young and making theater. Uh, and I mean, I still am making theater. I don't know. Why I said that is if I don't do it anymore. I guess my point is that when you're young, uh, and the world seems fully at your fingertips. And you think that, uh, everything that you're making is the most beautiful thing with the most value. It makes you ideological in a way that is not the case as you grow older. So you can be horrified by the mere visage of the theater that has been exploded. Thanks to, I think too much gas. It was like natural gas leak or something like that.

• 13:04November Kelly?

  Yeah, that tracks. I mean, the thing, the thing is, this is part of a sort of broader trend, right? Like Glasgow is a very flammable city, but it's mostly like property developers burning down listed buildings so they can turn them into student flats. This, just authentically an accident, as far as I know, but it is reflective of the entire city center being just kind of dead retail space. And so the only kind of businesses, you know, with some exceptions, admittedly, that can sort of stay there. Sexy coffee. Bootleg vapes and sexy coffee and bootleg vapes burn down sexy coffee and also maybe Central Station.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Hey, you know, you know what other city has a long and storied history of people burning down buildings because it's cheaper to recoup on the insurance money? Detroit, Michigan.

• 13:51Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah. I think that might come up later. I will, I will note that, um, thank God, uh, the Gregs survived.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  Oh, thank God.

• 14:01November Kelly?

  Yeah. My, my, my sort of local color detail is that I didn't, I didn't go out with a camera for this, right? Like I respected myself enough not to do that, but I deeply admire.

• 14:14Justin Roczniak?

  You're doing way better than I did when the, uh, when the, uh, the, the, the, the, what's it called? The, the goodwill collapsed in Philly.

• 14:23November Kelly?

  I, I, I should have, I should have, right? Like, why do I have all this camera shit? And to be fair, the, the, uh, fire service were like, stop flying drones over our heads. Um, but my, the person who really has my heart is the person who brought a large format press camera on a tripod and just stuck it at the end of the police cord and like sort of winched it up and was taking like, I think four by fives, um, of, of this sort of like devastation. Um, that's incredible. Um, and I, I, I wish someday to get on that person's level.

• 15:00Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, so.

• 15:01November Kelly?

  Yeah, so I died. I, I, it's over.

• 15:03Justin Roczniak?

  It's over. All right. And you can never have coffee.

• 15:06November Kelly?

  I'm not leaving you the $200 in the world.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Come on.

• 15:10Justin Roczniak?

  No one can ever have coffee in a sexy way ever again.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  No, no, they have to go to Greg's instead.

• 15:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 15:15Speaker 03

  Did I ever tell you, Nova, about the, the time that I was, my, my, my unifying theory about like, why beer is, uh, one of the reasons that every English person, uh, drinks so much beer is that it's like the only way to get good, cheap carbs. And then somebody said, well, what, you could just go to Greg's. And I was like, what are you talking about? I said, good, cheap carbs.

• 15:37November Kelly?

  I will, no, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna fight you for the honor of Greg's. Greg's is mid, but.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  I, it serves a purpose, but like, come on, let's not get carried away here.

• 15:48November Kelly?

  Hmm. All right. Uh, that's, that, that's me. Uh, everything, it's, it's, it's done here.

• 15:53Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Um, all right. So we've established the podcast does not respect Greg's in other news. Oh, right. I have to do the thing.

• 16:02November Kelly?

  You don't have and then do that. Yeah.

• 16:05Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, that's ram.

• 16:08Liam McAnderson?

  Nope.

• 16:11November Kelly?

  Ask not. There we go.

• 16:13Justin Roczniak?

  There we go.

• 16:13November Kelly?

  There we go.

• 16:15Justin Roczniak?

  How do I?

• 16:15November Kelly?

  Yeah. So in far less consequential news, you know?

• 16:19Justin Roczniak?

  We bought Isfahan. This is happening somewhere far away where there's like two guys and a camel. No, holy shit.

• 16:29November Kelly?

  Things of this nature.

• 16:30Justin Roczniak?

  Holy fucking shit.

• 16:31November Kelly?

  Yeah. You want to talk about it being over.

• 16:34Justin Roczniak?

  Holy shit.

• 16:35November Kelly?

  Being over. It's, it's, uh, yeah, the, the, it, it's, it's happening. The thing is happening.

• 16:40Justin Roczniak?

  The thing.

• 16:40November Kelly?

  Donald Trump has, has like started a war that the US now can't get out of.

• 16:46Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I can't, when I saw like smoke clouds coming out behind the big fucking mosque in Isfahan. It, it's over. It's done, folks.

• 16:58Justin Roczniak?

  Like, I, it's, I can't fucking believe that. I am so fucking mad. I, Jesus Christ.

• 17:05November Kelly?

  This is the culmination.

• 17:06Justin Roczniak?

  They don't even believe in Jesus Christ over that. He's just a prophet. Jesus Christ.

• 17:11November Kelly?

  It's the culmination of like, um, years of stupidity unleashed by Trump assassinating Qassem Soleimani.

• 17:19Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 17:20November Kelly?

  Um, who turned out to be the Jenga block keeping this whole thing together. And, you know, now that, now that sort of, he's gone and now that the Maduro thing went well, Trump, I think, thought that he could do this and impose regime change by bombing, which is, uh, you know.

• 17:39Liam McAnderson?

  We invented regime change via air superiority. From the book. You can do regime change via air superiority.

• 17:44November Kelly?

  From, from the sort of 1920s manual of air policing. Yeah. And, and now finds instead that he is, he is on Ali Larajani's timetable. You know, um, which is different than his and Iran can, it seems, do a longer war than anybody is really prepared for. Um, with the kind of baked in assumption that the US and Israel are just going to keep bombing whatever the fuck they want. You know, kill hundreds of schoolchildren at a time or like blow up sort of like ancient architecture or anything even sort of tenuously of military value.

• 18:23November Kelly?

  Um, and it doesn't matter because you still can't make insurance companies insure tankers going through the straits of Hormuz.

• 18:32Liam McAnderson?

  I did like Trump saying, oh, it's fine now. And then the, and then somebody quote tweeted it from CNBC with just a picture of a tanker that had gotten trucked.

• 18:40Justin Roczniak?

  Hmm. I don't, you just like, you feel so fucking ashamed.

• 18:44Liam McAnderson?

  Yes. Ashamed is the word. Yeah.

• 18:45Justin Roczniak?

  You, you, you, you, this is, this is. It's very, it's, it's bad. It's, I don't even know what to say. It's, it, but I, I hate it. I hate it so much.

• 18:56November Kelly?

  Yeah, well, it's also, it's also like, this is, this is a sort of a regime in the Islamic Republic, right, that was like, shooting into crowds a few weeks before. So, this isn't to say anything in their defense, right, but unambiguously, the US and Israel, the aggressors here, and it, they've put Iran in a position where any rational Iranian government would have no choice but to do exactly what they're doing now, which is to just hit everything. And I, you know, think that whatever sort of quagmire this results in is entirely of the US and Israel's making.

• 19:31Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 19:33Speaker 03

  And they were, they were fucking prepared, too. I mean, that's the other thing is, you know, I, it's not surprising how well-prepared they were, given what the intervening, you know, 15 years have looked like for Iran, but I, it is, what has been surprising is the extent to which the United States has seemingly been caught on the back foot about all this. Like, for some reason, they were not expecting that Iran would have a game plan in place and that they would be ready. They, I think they just figured that they would fold immediately, which doesn't make any fucking sense.

• 20:07Liam McAnderson?

  No, it doesn't.

• 20:07November Kelly?

  Just getting kind of like lured into it with the like 12-day war and with, it was even amongst, so you're kind of like NatSec blob people, right? It was kind of this thing of like, well, Millennium Challenge is just like a meme, right? They can't actually do it. There are a bunch of kind of false assumptions embedded in that, uh, you know, and basically, we're gonna wipe them out, right? And, you know, nobody's contesting Iranian airspace, right? That's, that's done, but it doesn't matter. And I think the kind of failure to apprehend that in advance is idiotic. I also think no one's gonna learn anything about, from this, uh, even if it does a full, like, energy crisis.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  I mean, the one thing that I will say I am noticing, uh, as, you know, an American idiot who is constantly communicating with and being exposed to other American idiots, is that the whole, like, Well, you know, not I, I, I wouldn't, I don't like the, the Ayatollah very much. Uh, and you know, at the end of the day, these Iranians, they, they have problems that need to be dealt with. But Donald Trump is going about it the wrong way. Like that, that shit is not flying anymore. Um, in the same way that there was this broad based consensus that on Israel, Palestine is like, well, it's really pretty complicated, you know?

• 21:25Speaker 03

  And there's something about the approach that the US Israel alliance has taken toward all matters in the fucking Levant over the past few years. That has completely put the lie to all of those inanities that we've heard time and time and time again.

• 21:41Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, sure.

• 21:41November Kelly?

  They don't give a fuck anymore. There's no like, the, the consent manufacturer is switched off.

• 21:47Liam McAnderson?

  Because they don't even care. I mean, the, the approval rating for this war. Ugh, is 41%, which is the lowest of any, I mean, Iraq was 75%. And I remember there were millions of us in the street protesting that.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 22:01Liam McAnderson?

  And, and, you know, I, I don't understand, but the thing I don't understand, right? It's like, you guys war gamed for this presumably in your, somewhere in there in the bowels of the Pentagon, I assume next to the Dunkin' Donuts.

• 22:13November Kelly?

  Extensively.

• 22:14Liam McAnderson?

  Extensively. And, and, and, and yeah, I agree with Josh. I think, I think that it just seems like, oh, well, you know, well, they don't have air superiority. They don't fucking need air superiority. They can do asymmetrical warfare.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 22:25Liam McAnderson?

  Forever, forever. They can go on forever. That's how asymmetrical warfare works. Ask the fucking Soviets in Afghanistan how it turned out for them.

• 22:34Speaker 03

  Or ask the fucking Americans.

• 22:38Liam McAnderson?

  Right.

• 22:38November Kelly?

  What's, it's also like this idea that we're gonna police, you know, hundreds of miles of coastline for USVs, small boats, fucking rocket launches, whatever. Uh, you know, drone sites, whatever the fuck, right? You're gonna blow up every like truck in southern Iran.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  Um, yeah.

• 22:58November Kelly?

  And, and then your sort of upshot of this is you're gonna keep doing that and you're keep, you're gonna keep spending money and keeping forces deployed that you can't really afford to because you didn't really plan. Until Lloyds or like any other maritime insurer is like, yeah, sure, whatever. We'll, we'll sort of like get back in the sending sort of tankers through club. And it's not, it's a fantasy.

• 23:23Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Okay. I, I, I want to say like two things. I mean, they're a little bit corny, but you know, the Trump administration is already talking about, or officials from the Trump administration have already been talking about, yeah, maybe we'll have to do a draft, whatever. If you are in the United States and you are under 26,

• 23:45Liam McAnderson?

  CO status right now.

• 23:46Justin Roczniak?

  To dodge the draft.

• 23:49Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 23:49Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know. Whatever you do, a great way to do it, looks like to be, uh, become trans. I don't know. Do whatever.

• 23:59November Kelly?

  I, it's, it's always, it's always good advice. Um, I think, you know, I, I, I applaud the Trump administration's recognition that the lives of trans Americans are too precious to risk in combat.

• 24:11Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's true. It's true. Um, the, the, the other thing is I, I know for a fact, a lot of you folks in the, uh, you know, defense contracting industry or in the intelligence community, listen to this podcast and I am talking to you right now. You can walk out. You don't.

• 24:30Liam McAnderson?

  Can you, you have a duty to walk out.

• 24:32November Kelly?

  Google fragging real quick for me.

• 24:35Liam McAnderson?

  If given a gun, I will kill the

• 24:39Liam McAnderson?

  and then you'll have to think that's all right, David.

• 24:43Justin Roczniak?

  You don't have to walk out of this in such a way that you get arrested. You can.

• 24:48November Kelly?

  That, that is also true.

• 24:49Justin Roczniak?

  Likely just walk out. You don't have to.

• 24:52November Kelly?

  You, you can do the, the lib thing. And I, I, I have to admit, I think it is a relatively honorable thing to do, if sometimes hypocritical to do the lib thing of like, I am straight up resigning in protest because I think this is criminal. Right? Like you could do a lot worse. Most people do, in fact.

• 25:10Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 25:10November Kelly?

  Um, so, yeah, this is, this is an option. Um, don't, don't sort of, you know, allow yourself to.

• 25:19November Kelly?

  Sort of that cloak of irony where it's like I'm doing sort of epic non credible defense shit. And it's like, no, you're not. You're you're complicit in a terrible crime. A terrible crime, which is gonna like harm your own country a great deal.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  The pain that you are feeling in your heart, that dissonance, that is your conscience.

• 25:40Liam McAnderson?

  You should listen to it.

• 25:40November Kelly?

  Handsome gender dysphoria probably as well. So you should probably like, yeah.

• 25:45Speaker 03

  Don't get birds of one stone because you won't get drafted either. Yeah.

• 25:47Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 25:48November Kelly?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:50November Kelly?

  So quit your job, start doing estrogen. I mean, work for me. I could have been a lawyer by now. Can you imagine?

• 25:56Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, you would have been a terrific one. Do what my dad did and simply light your draft card on fire. Do what I did and what I think, Roz, did you? Did you register as a CEO? Because I did.

• 26:08Justin Roczniak?

  I did not because I don't think I had the option to do it. I don't know if I ever registered for selection.

• 26:14Liam McAnderson?

  In order to get in order to get federal FAFSA money, you have to have registered for the draft. It is a bonkers policy, federal student aid.

• 26:23Justin Roczniak?

  What's FAFSA?

• 26:24Liam McAnderson?

  Federal student aid.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's part of the application process. Like you have to submit your draft card alongside your student aid paperwork. It's crazy.

• 26:35November Kelly?

  Oh, that's such a Holden bloodface policy.

• 26:38Justin Roczniak?

  I can tell you 100%. I never looked at a draft card in my entire life, so.

• 26:43Liam McAnderson?

  That's my boy.

• 26:44Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know. I have no idea.

• 26:46November Kelly?

  Maybe they thought you were trans. I don't know.

• 26:48Justin Roczniak?

  I have no idea.

• 26:51November Kelly?

  You just, what you need to do is you need to go back and get a copy of your birth certificate and see if they didn't put an F on there by mistake. You know, and they just think like, oh, yeah.

• 27:00Liam McAnderson?

  Justine Rozier. Yeah, easy peasy.

• 27:01Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, no, no. I know if I were.

• 27:03November Kelly?

  You can don't dead name him.

• 27:05Justin Roczniak?

  If I were born a woman, I would have been named Jessica.

• 27:09November Kelly?

  Oh.

• 27:09Justin Roczniak?

  Ah, yes.

• 27:10Liam McAnderson?

  I don't like that. I don't like yours as Jessica. I'm not gonna lie to you.

• 27:17November Kelly?

  I, I think, I think you can identify however you want.

• 27:20Justin Roczniak?

  This is, this is an important, this is an important thing for me to know. I, I am trying to cultivate the personality as the world's most civilian man, and this helps.

• 27:32Justin Roczniak?

  What's a gun? I don't know.

• 27:34November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah. Absolutely no camouflage, things of this nature. You're not meeting any grooming standards.

• 27:41Justin Roczniak?

  No, he's not. No, no.

• 27:45November Kelly?

  What, what you gotta do is you gotta get, this is another option if you don't wanna become trans is get a bunch of like really disqualifying tattoos, you know?

• 27:51Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, there you go. Yeah.

• 27:53November Kelly?

  Get, get, get like.

• 27:54Liam McAnderson?

  Like Nazi ones?

• 27:55Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, like progressive candidate for Senator Graham Platter.

• 28:01November Kelly?

  Have, have you, have you seen Pete Hegseth's tattoos?

• 28:05Justin Roczniak?

  I have.

• 28:05November Kelly?

  Clearly, they are not disqualifying anymore.

• 28:07Justin Roczniak?

  I have seen his tattoos. They are very concerning.

• 28:09November Kelly?

  What I'm talking about is you get a Comic Sans fuck the army in like.

• 28:13Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, I'm a red.

• 28:14November Kelly?

  Full heads.

• 28:16Liam McAnderson?

  So when you salute, just as fuck the army right there.

• 28:18November Kelly?

  Yeah. I mean, you, you're gonna have to add in like other branches so they can't put you anywhere else as well because like the fuck the army guy is probably gonna do pretty well in like the Marines.

• 28:28Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, he's, he's, he's there. He's an OCS for the Navy.

• 28:32Liam McAnderson?

  Get fuck, fuck the United States Uniformed Corps and it has to go, has to go all the way down here.

• 28:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's the fucking bit from The Simpsons. I am sick and tired of all of these jokes about my giant hand. It's that, but it's on your entire arm.

• 28:45Liam McAnderson?

  Eat shit, Noah.

• 28:48November Kelly?

  Yeah, if you, if you're in those like surgeon generals, uniformed public health corps, frag your commanding officer and leave.

• 28:56Liam McAnderson?

  Uh, big tobacco is good, actually. Another martyr for the cause.

• 29:03November Kelly?

  Yeah, no, this is, it, it, it's butchery and uh, America is a terrible country. Let's not skip over Britain's complicity in this either, which has been weirdly halting, but still.

• 29:14Justin Roczniak?

  It's gonna be funny to, to see how these takes age in two weeks. It's gonna be. You know, it's gonna be, you know, when this episode comes out, it's gonna be interesting, to say the least. I don't know, maybe.

• 29:25November Kelly?

  Hit Dubai again.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  I mean, the one other thing I will say is it's been, it's been very funny seeing all the people being like, well, Taco Trump is back up to his old tricks and he's chickening out. Well, guess what, dipshit? It's not up to you if you're gonna pull out anymore.

• 29:41Liam McAnderson?

  We killed 175 fucking kids, man.

• 29:43November Kelly?

  Penis stuck in mousetrap, please advise.

• 29:46Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, Trump, Trump thought he could make this somebody else's problem.

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Doesn't work that way.

• 29:51Justin Roczniak?

  Apparently not, apparently not. Didn't work this time. Uh, you know.

• 29:55November Kelly?

  Yeah, he doesn't even know what he wants, you know, because he's old and senile and, yeah.

• 30:01Justin Roczniak?

  Well, yeah, he wants a nice ballroom attached to the.

• 30:04Liam McAnderson?

  Go to bed and then, and you'll have to bleep this 32 minutes, 30 seconds in.

• 30:08Speaker 03

  What if I didn't?

• 30:11Liam McAnderson?

  Sorry, not you, Roz. I love you. And I, yeah, no, not you. You're handsome.

• 30:16Justin Roczniak?

  But I agree with the idea of putting a nice ballroom next to the.

• 30:19November Kelly?

  Can we, can we, can we, real quick, before we move off this, can we salute the, the one true hero of this war, right? The ghost of Kuwait.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 30:29November Kelly?

  Brave, Gucci-belted aviator who locked in, went ace combat mode and became three fifths of an ace in a minute. Now granted, it's easier when they're, they think that you're on their side, but we know better, don't we?

• 30:52Justin Roczniak?

  Well, no one, no one paid for the friend of Odin's bombers, I guess.

• 31:01Justin Roczniak?

  No, we didn't think we'd, you know, we, we spent all that time bombing paintings of fighter planes in Iran. We didn't think that they were, you know, anything was left. Didn't consider, oh, it's one of our own.

• 31:16Liam McAnderson?

  We live in the dumbest goddamn country on God's green earth.

• 31:19Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, anyway, that was. The goddamn news. How do I?

• 31:24Liam McAnderson?

  You can do it.

• 31:25November Kelly?

  You can do it. You alt-tab and then you press the button and then you alt-tab back.

• 31:29Liam McAnderson?

  Christ on.

• 31:32November Kelly?

  Fucking damn it.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  By the way, speaking of baseball, did you all see that Italy beat the United States at the World Baseball Classic?

• 31:41Liam McAnderson?

  Aaron Judge, thanks for nothing, you big dumb Yankee sack of shit.

• 31:44Speaker 03

  That's classic Yankee behavior. Fuck the Yankees.

• 31:48Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck the Yankees.

• 31:49November Kelly?

  Ah, Yankees lose. Looking beautiful.

• 31:52Liam McAnderson?

  Ah, my favorite thing about about Roz is when he does something that he finds funny, he gives this little giggle.

• 32:00Liam McAnderson?

  It's the most endearing goddamn thing where he's like, hee hee hee. I just love it.

• 32:05Justin Roczniak?

  So.

• 32:07Justin Roczniak?

  Our first question we must ask, what is Detroit?

• 32:11Liam McAnderson?

  Rules.

• 32:11November Kelly?

  Uh, Robocop.

• 32:13Liam McAnderson?

  Go Lions.

• 32:14November Kelly?

  Motor company.

• 32:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 32:16November Kelly?

  People mover.

• 32:17Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, Renaissance Center.

• 32:18Liam McAnderson?

  Pizza Renaissance Center.

• 32:20Speaker 03

  Great pizza. Weird but great.

• 32:22November Kelly?

  Being largely owned by one guy.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  That's that's right. That's right. Yeah.

• 32:28Justin Roczniak?

  Pony dogs.

• 32:29November Kelly?

  Eminem.

• 32:31Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  The Lions, the Tigers.

• 32:33November Kelly?

  D12.

• 32:34Speaker 03

  The Pistons.

• 32:35Liam McAnderson?

  The Pistons, the Red Wings.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  Insane Clown Posse.

• 32:38November Kelly?

  Omni-consumer products.

• 32:40Speaker 03

  Gross point blank.

• 32:42Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 32:44Justin Roczniak?

  What else?

• 32:46Speaker 03

  Uh.

• 32:46Justin Roczniak?

  The Campus Martius.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Uh, yes, uh, that that stupid Journey song. Don't Stop Believin', you know?

• 32:54Liam McAnderson?

  Fucking song.

• 32:55November Kelly?

  Chrysler.

• 32:56Justin Roczniak?

  There's no midnight train going anywhere from Detroit anymore.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  No, and South Detroit doesn't exist. Famously, uh, they were they were talking about a radio station that played their single in Southfield, Michigan, which ironically is actually northwest of Detroit, but they didn't know that.

• 33:13Justin Roczniak?

  Well, South Detroit.

• 33:14November Kelly?

  X Human Revolution.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  That's right. David Sarif, Adam Jensen, Farida Malik, um.

• 33:21Liam McAnderson?

  That's my girl.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  I love her.

• 33:27Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, yeah, Detroit is a great American city. We all love.

• 33:30Speaker 03

  The arsenal of democracy.

• 33:32Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 33:33Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 33:35Liam McAnderson?

  Also, the Pistons play there.

• 33:37Justin Roczniak?

  Across from Detroit is

• 33:38Liam McAnderson?

  Dallas at the Palace.

• 33:40Justin Roczniak?

  A rival city.

• 33:42Liam McAnderson?

  Are we gonna boo the Canadians? Cause I'm ready.

• 33:44Justin Roczniak?

  What is Windsor?

• 33:45Liam McAnderson?

  Sucks.

• 33:46November Kelly?

  Uh, it looks, it looks bad.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  It looks so bad. The Caesars Casino.

• 33:51Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, that's it.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  Richie Houghton. Um.

• 33:54Liam McAnderson?

  Bootlegging.

• 33:55November Kelly?

  Being, being named for a family of pedophiles.

• 33:58Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 33:59Liam McAnderson?

  Oh.

• 33:59Speaker 03

  Yes. Um, Richie Houghton again.

• 34:04Liam McAnderson?

  I'm going with bootlegging a second time. That shitty Canadian whiskey I once made Roz, uh, take a shot of.

• 34:11Justin Roczniak?

  A shitty Canadian whiskey, but I repeat myself.

• 34:14Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I will back him up. I know more about whiskey than you do, you fucking dweebs of the comments. I have a drinking problem.

• 34:23November Kelly?

  Me when I'm in the Mark Carney Alliance of Medium Powers and I have to pretend to like Canadian Club.

• 34:29Speaker 03

  The, the other, the other side of the bridge that we are talking about as part of this episode. That's what Windsor is.

• 34:35Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I actually have no fucking idea what happens in Windsor. Windsor is like a complete like.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  It's mostly the casino.

• 34:41Justin Roczniak?

  I just know it's there. It exists.

• 34:43November Kelly?

  Canada's Las Vegas.

• 34:45Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. No, we'll, we'll, we'll hold on. There's also Niagara Falls, Ontario.

• 34:51Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, you can see those. And there's a Ripley's Believe It or Not there and a Hershey's shock orb.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 34:57Liam McAnderson?

  And, uh,

• 34:58November Kelly?

  Nice microclimate.

• 34:59Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. And, uh, Niagara, I like Niagara on the lake. Uh, that's, that's, that's nice. I like ice.

• 35:05Speaker 03

  You go up there, you might, you might find a wild Riley Quinn running around potentially. It's possible.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  The Shaw Festival is also up there at Niagara on the Lake. Very nice.

• 35:14November Kelly?

  I, I, I like the Niagara on the Lake is so essentially Riley a place to be from that we, we're still doing bits about it even his absence. Like when I'm not on, you guys aren't doing like bits about Bromley and I'm, I'm glad, you know, cause it doesn't have a kind of cultural.

• 35:29Justin Roczniak?

  What is a Bromley?

• 35:31November Kelly?

  Bromley is the suburb, uh, exurb really of southeastern London where I am from. It is the only borough of London to have no tube stations. You can only get into it or out of it by rail or bus. And it sucks dick.

• 35:46Speaker 03

  Oh, I make it.

• 35:46November Kelly?

  It's a real bad place.

• 35:48Justin Roczniak?

  You grew up and that's why we started this podcast November. You grew up in London's Burke, Virginia.

• 35:55November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, the novel The Buddha of Suburbia is set there. It's, it's very boring. It's very leafy. For a while, it was the safest conservative seat in the country. Yeah.

• 36:08Justin Roczniak?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a Bromley joke in next week's The Worst of All Possible Worlds, just for you.

• 36:12November Kelly?

  Just, just go ahead and like, um, Google image, uh, Bromley High Street.

• 36:17Justin Roczniak?

  All right.

• 36:18November Kelly?

  And just, uh, and just feel yourself age five years.

• 36:21Justin Roczniak?

  Bromley High Street.

• 36:23November Kelly?

  Hmm. You wanna do some, you wanna do some shopping, experience, you know, all of the kind of luxury of-

• 36:28Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, there we go. Oh, wow.

• 36:29November Kelly?

  Living in London, like global city, like world financial center, incredibly glamorous place.

• 36:35Justin Roczniak?

  Looks like you got a Greg's. Looks like you got a Pizza Hut.

• 36:38November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah. I'd say that covers most of it. Um, you know, place that looks like it's got kind of dry rot.

• 36:46Liam McAnderson?

  Roz, you're getting a phone call.

• 36:48Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, I am, and it's from June.

• 36:51Liam McAnderson?

  Tell her you can't hang out. Put her on.

• 36:54Justin Roczniak?

  We're reporting a, we're recording a podcast.

• 36:56Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, answer the phone, all the podcasts. That's right.

• 36:58Justin Roczniak?

  I know, but forgot that, uh, daylight savings time exists, so we're podcasting.

• 37:03November Kelly?

  I'm sorry. Please tell June I'm sorry.

• 37:09Justin Roczniak?

  Please say hi to June for me.

• 37:10Liam McAnderson?

  Say hi to June for me.

• 37:12Justin Roczniak?

  June says hi.

• 37:13Liam McAnderson?

  Hi.

• 37:14November Kelly?

  Hi, June.

• 37:15Justin Roczniak?

  Great. Okay, amazing. We're doing great. We're doing great on this podcast today.

• 37:20Liam McAnderson?

  I, my, uh, the 10,000 losses bit, one of the favorite things we do is, uh, research live on air. We're just like, yeah, I don't know. And then you can hear me, me and Tom just like slamming away on the keyboard. And, and then I was talking to Tom the other day. He was like, so when we, we met a, a fan, shout out Joshua, uh-

• 37:40November Kelly?

  Thank you.

• 37:40Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, not you. At, uh, at, uh, Kyber Pass. And he was like, yeah, you guys seem to be like really well researched and processed. And Tom goes, I have seen the process. I have been screaming at Roz 15 minutes to go before the slides are in. Just trying to get this shit to paper. And I'm like, yeah, it's, it, yeah, yeah. I want to peel back the curtain a little bit.

• 38:03Justin Roczniak?

  Hmm. So anyway, that's what Windsor, Ontario is.

• 38:08Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Wonder how much a handle of Windsor Canadian whiskey is.

• 38:11Justin Roczniak?

  Um, now, uh, and, and these cities are across from each other.

• 38:19November Kelly?

  How do they get the, how do they get the river to do that?

• 38:22Liam McAnderson?

  Very carefully.

• 38:24Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, God.

• 38:24November Kelly?

  Pretty cool.

• 38:25Justin Roczniak?

  The fucking lakes are amazing. You know, you know what the weird thing about them is? Is that in a hundred thousand years, they will fill up and we won't have them anymore.

• 38:35November Kelly?

  Huh.

• 38:35Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 38:36Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 38:38Justin Roczniak?

  That's something to think about in the future.

• 38:41Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I'll worry about that in a hundred thousand years when they have preserved my body and, uh, what's that called? When you freeze your head?

• 38:48Justin Roczniak?

  formaldehyde.

• 38:49Liam McAnderson?

  No.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  Cryogenics?

• 38:50Liam McAnderson?

  Cryogenics. Yeah, baby. Alright, love ya.

• 38:59November Kelly?

  I like, I like that in Windsor, there's a McDonald's in sandwich. That pleases me.

• 39:04Liam McAnderson?

  Hmm.

• 39:04Justin Roczniak?

  Bye.

• 39:09Justin Roczniak?

  So yeah, uh, there's no South Detroit because of course, uh, that's Windsor.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:14Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 39:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. That's where Detroit is this exciting place where you get to go south to go to Canada.

• 39:21Speaker 03

  It's the only place in the entire United States where you can go south to go to Canada.

• 39:25Justin Roczniak?

  And, uh, anyway, lots of people want to go to Canada.

• 39:31Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, I have seen this. This image is actually burned into my brain from Roz's, for our both, well, one ill-fated trip to Newfoundland and then one that actually went successfully.

• 39:42Justin Roczniak?

  I posted this image every single time on social media when we went to Canada.

• 39:47Liam McAnderson?

  I know.

• 39:47November Kelly?

  Doing, doing the kind of like, um, liberalism bicycle cartoon, but it's like, yeah, the two great powers working equally as they should, the United States and Britain.

• 39:57Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. We're, we're going to create this amazing country. It's called Canada.

• 40:02Liam McAnderson?

  I just want to point out that Uncle Sam is not representative of the average American. We are much tubbier than that.

• 40:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  I like the, I like the, the British fellow though. I like, I like his red coat. Yeah, that is John Bull, isn't it? Yeah.

• 40:14November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 40:14Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 40:16November Kelly?

  That's our, that's our hideous sort of Tory landowner caricature.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  You got John Bull and Uncle Sam and they're both carrying some sacks of cash. One of those sacks contains pounds, the other sack contains dollars. I'm assuming at least 200 of them, but I wouldn't know.

• 40:30November Kelly?

  No, no you wouldn't.

• 40:31Liam McAnderson?

  Sausage B. L.

• 40:33November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 40:34Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, we're gonna make Nova come to Canada too, to get those dollars.

• 40:39November Kelly?

  I, I would love to go to Canada. Also, I appreciate that and sort of, um, you know, nod to local traditions, they're carrying this money on what appears to be a kind of toboggan or incipient future toboggan.

• 40:50Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. We're gonna do the Iditarod, lads.

• 40:54Justin Roczniak?

  Hmm. So now we must ask, what is?

• 41:00Justin Roczniak?

  Okay, so there was a railroad that was chartered to build from Toronto to Chicago by way of Windsor and was thus called the Michigan Central.

• 41:16November Kelly?

  In that it sort of is, is central to cutting Michigan out of the thing.

• 41:20Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, well, it does go through Michigan, right? There's actually several lines through there. Um, the Michigan Central is sort of...

• 41:30Justin Roczniak?

  Okay, we have to understand the New York Central Railroad, which was an amalgamation of...

• 41:35Liam McAnderson?

  I don't want to do that. I don't want Jay to be happy.

• 41:36Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, no, I don't want to either, but we have to.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  I want, I want to. Keep going, Roz. I want to.

• 41:40Liam McAnderson?

  No, no, no, I'm hijacking this.

• 41:42Justin Roczniak?

  Congrats on adding yourself as a green hat on a podcast or red hats. Anyway.

• 41:46Liam McAnderson?

  While recording this, it is Jay Sante's birthday, so happy birthday, Jay.

• 41:50Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, he's a green hat, yeah.

• 41:52Liam McAnderson?

  I know he is. Happy birthday, Jay.

• 41:54Justin Roczniak?

  Happy birthday. Um, anyway, so this is sort of, um, this is a railroad, I believe it is chartered separately, but it'd be, very quickly becomes part of the New York Central system of railroads, right?

• 42:12Justin Roczniak?

  Essentially, you have the water level route from New York City to Chicago. Right. Most trains are going to go north along the Hudson and then west along the Erie Canal sort of route, um, down the south side of Lake Erie and then over the flat over there. But there is also the Michigan Central route, which goes through Toronto or goes near Toronto, excuse me, and then goes through Detroit, right? And then over to Chicago. So you have,

• 42:53Justin Roczniak?

  you're hitting more important destinations in that sense.

• 42:57November Kelly?

  I like being sort of approximately in Toronto, like probabilistically you're in Toronto.

• 43:03Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah. You're, you're, you're sort of like, you're in Hamilton. Like it's, yeah, you're basically in Toronto, right?

• 43:09November Kelly?

  Get a walk.

• 43:11Justin Roczniak?

  Mm hmm. So.

• 43:12November Kelly?

  You know, you don't, you don't like it. Build your own, your own goddamn railroad.

• 43:15Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly. Several people did.

• 43:21Justin Roczniak?

  But for this railroad crossing the Detroit River was difficult because no one figured out how to lay railroad tracks directly on water until Washington State Department of Transportation did it like last year. Right?

• 43:35November Kelly?

  And, and of course railroad Jesus.

• 43:38Speaker 03

  Yes. But that goes without saying. I don't, I don't know why even like we, we, that was table stakes. We all knew that.

• 43:46Justin Roczniak?

  Um, so you're, you're sort of, your navigation interest, the shipping companies, the shipping companies by, by means of, well, it's the Great Lakes. So they ship on boats, obviously. They are not super happy with the idea of putting a bridge between Windsor and Detroit, which is where this railroad would cross. Right? The railroads wanted to put in a drawbridge. Um, which is even worse because the, the, the, the shipping companies were like, we don't even want a single pier in the river. It's going to fuck up our ships.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  The crazy thing too, is they had like, agreed on it, at least in principle for a little while, that they were going to build the drawbridge because they had seen the drawbridges over the Chicago River, which I should note is a much narrower river than the Detroit River. Uh, when you're in downtown Chicago. But they had seen it and they were like, oh, well, it worked in Chicago. Why couldn't it work here too?

• 44:47Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, and there was a weird proposal, which was the, uh, the winter bridge, where they would just sort of

• 44:55Justin Roczniak?

  float in a 400 or 500 foot segment of bridge in the winter when there was no shipping.

• 45:03Liam McAnderson?

  Oh damn.

• 45:04Justin Roczniak?

  You know, but ultimately, the specifications for the bridge, this is in the 1880s, I want to say, uh, were so prohibitive that no one could figure out how to build one, except for an insane man named Gustav Lindenthal,

• 45:22Justin Roczniak?

  who we've talked about before on this podcast, right?

• 45:27Liam McAnderson?

  In relation to what?

• 45:28Justin Roczniak?

  In, in relate, you know, the enormous bridge to what would have been Penn Station?

• 45:34Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 45:35Justin Roczniak?

  It's that guy. You know, the Hellgate Bridge? It's that guy. The Queensborough Bridge. It's that guy. He has never seen a bridge that he didn't want to make bigger and more rigid. This is really in his career.

• 45:50November Kelly?

  Hell fucking yeah. This is my guy right here. Embrace Lindenthal thoughts.

• 45:56Speaker 03

  And he wrote, this is the guy who you said designed the 59th Street Bridge and the Hellgate Bridge?

• 46:01Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 46:01Speaker 03

  Huh. Or I guess the Hellgate, as it's called. It's actually not technically the Hellgate Bridge, it's the Hellgate.

• 46:07Justin Roczniak?

  Oh no, the Hell, the Hellgate is, Hellgate is some Dutch bullshit that the East River was called at some point. Anyway, I, I, I don't know that offhand. Um, anyway, I might be wrong there. Anyway. Lindenthal, Lindenthal approaches like every engineering child, uh, challenge as a child might. Um, he's sort of-

• 46:30Liam McAnderson?

  So, so just me with my crayons?

• 46:32Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it's like, I'm going to make the biggest, I'm going to make the widest bridge, I'm going to make the biggest bridge, I'm going to make the most rigid bridge. Lindenthal comes up with a hundred and fifty foot tall insane truss bridge for this location.

• 46:48Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:49Justin Roczniak?

  Just something completely bizarre. Um, I don't have an image of them because I didn't have enough time to look for it. I don't know if any.

• 46:58November Kelly?

  Just some real like palace of the Soviets type shit.

• 47:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, something that was actually probably doable with the technology of the time, but would have been very difficult. Um, and so he proposed this for the, uh, the, the Michigan Central Railroad and they got mad at him and said, no, we can't do that. Um, they, so they decided to instead maybe try and build a tunnel, which didn't work very well. Uh, as, uh, this is, this is Josh's slide.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, uh, as Roz is kind of saying, right? They really wanted to be able to move freight transnationally for a lot of reasons, including that, you know, they had these railroads that were basically terminating on either end of the river. And the only good way to get cargo across was to take those box cars, drop them onto ferries and then float the ferries across the river. Right? Incredible. But, you know, in Michigan, in the winter, you just straight up can't do that for like three or four months, or at least that's how it was 150 years ago. These days you can do it with, uh, more ease relatively speaking, because it just doesn't freeze over in the way that it used to, but.

• 48:14November Kelly?

  Hmm. I wonder if that's to do with anything.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  Nah, nah, it's chill. Don't worry about it.

• 48:19Justin Roczniak?

  Also, it wasn't like, like the Trans-Siberian Railroad where in Arctus, they would just run the rails across Lake Baikal in, uh, winter.

• 48:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 48:29Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, we don't give a fuck.

• 48:31Justin Roczniak?

  Um, look, I think a train only fell through the ice once.

• 48:35Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, that's a pretty damn good safety record, considering.

• 48:38November Kelly?

  Service delayed due to seals on the line.

• 48:41Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 48:42Liam McAnderson?

  Can you get, get, hey? No freight, freight, get.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  So the first attempt to build a tunnel then was actually in 1871. And this is a story that I thought was so wonderful that I wanted to quote directly from the book, which I think Roz, I think we both read the same book on this one.

• 48:59Justin Roczniak?

  We both read the same book, yes.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  Uh, this is called The Ambassador Bridge, A Monument to Progress by Philip P. Mason. Work on the tunnels proceeded slowly. Relatively crude tools impeded progress. Steel tunnel shields, powerful ventilating equipment, and efficient excavating equipment apparatus so common in 20th century engineering products had not yet been developed. Labor disputes erupted when Canadian workers went on strike over payment of wages in American money, which at that time was worth considerably less than Canadian currency.

• 49:30Justin Roczniak?

  I could never imagine that happening.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  I know.

• 49:32November Kelly?

  No.

• 49:34November Kelly?

  It's like, what the fuck is this? Like, cheap, American shit.

• 49:38Justin Roczniak?

  I demand loonies.

• 49:39Speaker 03

  I need them. The workers finally settled for 25 cents more a day, amounting to $2.50 for an eight-hour shift. Inadequate soil information also caused problems. Instead of the blue clay predicted, the workers hit hard pan and huge boulders on both sides of the river. Sulfurous gases plagued the laborers, causing discomfort and frequent work stoppages. 1,180 feet of the tunnel from the American shore had been excavated when the ventilating equipment failed in 1872. Before the huge fans were repaired, two workers inspecting a reported leak in the tunnel face were overcome by poisonous gases and died before they could be rescued. After the accident, workers continued to excavate an additional 40 feet before the work was abandoned.

• 50:24Speaker 03

  Although work on the Canadian side continued for a few weeks thereafter, it too was abandoned when the contractors asked to be relieved of further obligations.

• 50:32November Kelly?

  Tunnel haunted.

• 50:33Speaker 03

  The excavation-

• 50:34November Kelly?

  Loading boring machine tunnel haunted.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  And then this is my favorite bit. The excavation had extended only 380 feet from the Canadian shore.

• 50:44Liam McAnderson?

  That's not very good, is it?

• 50:45Speaker 03

  Not very good at all.

• 50:46Justin Roczniak?

  One of the things is, if you look at the length here, they actually got pretty close before they gave up.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  Right, mostly because of how far it went on the American side.

• 50:55November Kelly?

  Like, guy mining diamonds meme?

• 50:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:58November Kelly?

  Just giving up.

• 50:59Speaker 03

  Except that rather than diamonds, it is just-

• 51:03November Kelly?

  It's another guy.

• 51:04Speaker 03

  It's another guy.

• 51:05November Kelly?

  It's two of those guys just walking away sadly, pickaxe over shoulder.

• 51:09Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 51:10Speaker 03

  That and a vent full of sulfuric gas, right? It's those two things.

• 51:15Justin Roczniak?

  That tunnel is probably still there, you know?

• 51:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, may well be. Um, so this, this again was one of the things that led to them studying the feasibility of a bridge. It failed. The Michigan Central Railroad basically was just like, okay, fuck it, we're doing it. And in 1906, they dug these really deep trenches into the river and then dumped concrete tubes down into it, stuck the concrete tubes together and called it a tunnel. And that tunnel was completed in 1909, opened in 1910, and it's actually still in operation today. Uh, and it's owned by Canadian Pacific, uh, Canadian Pacific Kansas City, which owns basically that entire stretch of the line.

• 51:55Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, and this, this is a sort of a, a, an interesting one of a, a construction method, which is often described as very modern today, like immersed tube construction. Um, it's like, oh, we just build a trench in the bottom of the river and we sink prefabricated tunnel sections in there. And, uh, you know, you're like, damn, that's really clever. I'm glad we have modern technology. No, they did it in 1906. Um, or 19, 1909, excuse me. Um, it's also how like the Baltimore Tunnel was, uh, Baltimore Harbor Tunnel was, uh, done as well as the, uh, the, what's it?

• 52:36Justin Roczniak?

  Um, the tunnel that replaced the Queensborough Bridge for subways.

• 52:42Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:43Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, interesting. Hang in there, Nova.

• 52:47Justin Roczniak?

  It works really good.

• 52:49November Kelly?

  I've, I've, I've been up for, how many hours is it since two in the morning? 20 and a half?

• 52:56Justin Roczniak?

  Well, that's a good chunk.

• 52:57Liam McAnderson?

  Jesus. Drop if you need to.

• 52:59November Kelly?

  Yeah. No, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that to the listener. I've been missing too many of these lately. I don't want people to think I've lost interest just because my life is falling apart.

• 53:09Liam McAnderson?

  You missed one.

• 53:10November Kelly?

  I have, I have, okay, it's called a work ethic and, uh, it's driving me-

• 53:16Liam McAnderson?

  Protestant to me.

• 53:17November Kelly?

  Oh, God, okay.

• 53:19Speaker 03

  I thought we were supposed to kill white Protestants. What's going on?

• 53:22Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I said unlimited genocide against white Protestants, not, not an hour ago.

• 53:27November Kelly?

  Uh, no, I have a Catholic work ethic, which is that I, I don't work very hard, but I feel extremely guilty about it.

• 53:34Justin Roczniak?

  There you go.

• 53:35Liam McAnderson?

  Ah, the girl.

• 53:38Justin Roczniak?

  So we have to talk about Charles Evan Foster's extremely weird bridge.

• 53:44November Kelly?

  Incredible.

• 53:45Justin Roczniak?

  So this is, this is sort of, this is after the, the first tunnel was dug, right? Uh, the first railroad tunnel.

• 53:55Justin Roczniak?

  Now.

• 53:56November Kelly?

  Give me, give me, give me two cathedral uprights, the strings off a piano and a whole bunch of Megalopolis.

• 54:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, this bad boy is like halfway between the Manhattan Bridge and Tower Bridge, I feel like aesthetically.

• 54:09Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. So Fowler is working with Gustav Lindenthal again.

• 54:15November Kelly?

  Have you been texting Gustav?

• 54:17Justin Roczniak?

  Have you been texting Gustav? Gustav Lindenthal had by this time almost built the North River Bridge. But also quite a few other huge stupid bridges. As I mentioned before, the Queensborough and the Hellgate Bridge. The Hellgate Bridge was just finishing up, uh, construction at this point, right? This is 1919. He and Fowler show up in Detroit like we're going to get things done, right? There was clearly a demand for a road bridge. They were going to design one, figure out how it could get funded and built later. Gustav had this big legacy. He had actually built quite a few bridges.

• 55:01Justin Roczniak?

  Fowler had also worked on various bridges before, including one I, I will show here. But you'll see how there's a different design philosophy here on the White Pass and Yukon Railroad. Right? Uh, look, look at this stupid thing.

• 55:19Liam McAnderson?

  Oh dear.

• 55:21Liam McAnderson?

  Don't look down.

• 55:22Justin Roczniak?

  A little bit spindly, isn't it?

• 55:25November Kelly?

  This is, this is concerning to me. How much do you trust an engineer who is doing all of these calculations by hand?

• 55:32Speaker 03

  Is that thing still around?

• 55:33Justin Roczniak?

  I have seen it with mine own two eyes.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 55:38Justin Roczniak?

  This is up in Alaska.

• 55:40November Kelly?

  How has this survived the test of time when the city of Glasgow hasn't?

• 55:44Justin Roczniak?

  You may have noticed the railroad bypasses it now.

• 55:49November Kelly?

  Yeah, that'll do. Well, I mean, also true of Glasgow.

• 55:54Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So little bit different philosophies here. That being said, Lindenthal obviously wants this huge horrible trust thing like his 1889 design. I, I want to see what that was. I, I, you know, Fowler wanted something a little lighter and a little more reasonable. These disagreements festered and eventually as a result Lindenthal withdrew from the project.

• 56:24November Kelly?

  Yeah, he's right to do it as a negotiating tactic. Demand the impossible storm out when you don't get it.

• 56:29Justin Roczniak?

  That's right. Yeah, that from Robert Moses. Yes.

• 56:33November Kelly?

  Burn that bridge.

• 56:35Justin Roczniak?

  Here's the thing Fowler's design is more reasonable than Lindenthal's, but still very aggressive.

• 56:42November Kelly?

  Well, this is also kind of useful to have an outrider, you know, is like, you think I'm crazy. You should see my friends.

• 56:47Justin Roczniak?

  You should see that other guy. Yeah.

• 56:48November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 56:49Justin Roczniak?

  This is going to be a two level railroad and road bridge with six lanes of traffic on top, four standard gauge railroad tracks below, fitted for electric operation, telephone and telegraph wires, plumbing, et cetera. Two trolley lines on the upper deck. Long, very, very, very long approach spans with grades not exceeding 1.5%, which was a little steep for the railroad, obviously fine for cars and piers, which interfered minimally with shipping. Um, this would have nearly spanned the entire river clear. Um, it's actually.

• 57:21Liam McAnderson?

  God damn.

• 57:23Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. It's, it's a, a bit like the bridge that actually got built, but heavy.

• 57:31Liam McAnderson?

  Sure.

• 57:32Justin Roczniak?

  Right? This is the light option. I want to see what Lindenthal thought was the option to do. I'm sure it was like 16 tracks, 40 lanes of traffic. Anyway.

• 57:43Liam McAnderson?

  I call this one the big motherfucker.

• 57:46November Kelly?

  Enclose the whole river.

• 57:50Justin Roczniak?

  So Fowler starts the American Transit Company and the Canadian Transit Company to build the bridge, the American Transit Company in particular, you know, it's going to build a bridge between Michigan and Ontario and was thus incorporated in Nevada.

• 58:06Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  Classic way to do it. Great tax savings.

• 58:10Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 58:11November Kelly?

  Good place to put a bridge, you know, they've got London Bridge there.

• 58:14Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, that's a good point.

• 58:15Speaker 03

  No, that's in Utah, isn't it? Or isn't it?

• 58:16Justin Roczniak?

  No, it's in Nevada.

• 58:18Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 58:18Justin Roczniak?

  It's in, I forget what the city is.

• 58:21Speaker 03

  Oh, it's in Lake Havasu.

• 58:22Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 58:23Liam McAnderson?

  That's Arizona.

• 58:24Speaker 03

  Arizona.

• 58:25Justin Roczniak?

  I don't have a sense of that.

• 58:26Speaker 03

  Oh, we're all wrong.

• 58:27Justin Roczniak?

  All these motherfuckers. All these places are the same.

• 58:30Liam McAnderson?

  That's true. Man was not meant to live in Nevada slash Arizona.

• 58:37Justin Roczniak?

  No.

• 58:37Liam McAnderson?

  Phoenix should not exist. It is a testament to man's arrogance.

• 58:40Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 58:42November Kelly?

  Almost melted onto the sidewalk one time there.

• 58:45Justin Roczniak?

  So Fowler just needs investors now. So the first person he goes to, the first people he goes to is the railroads. They fucking hated it. They would not invest in this bridge. They thought it was stupid.

• 59:01Speaker 03

  Also, like, they already had a pretty reliable tunnel. So like...

• 59:06Justin Roczniak?

  They had the tunnel, yeah. And they had, also the advantage of the railroads is, well, freight doesn't complain.

• 59:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 59:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, just go around Lake Erie if you really need to. Whee. So he dropped the railroad deck from the design. Um, so he started, like, saying, we need to, we need to get the support of local business interests, right? So he hired a highly efficient salesman named Russell T. Scott, right? And he's this sort of hard-selling, you know, New York salesman-type guy, right?

• 59:50Liam McAnderson?

  Hey, I got a bridge I can sell you. Hey, you'll be walking here.

• 59:54November Kelly?

  Half Donald Trump, half The Simpsons monorail guy?

• 59:58Justin Roczniak?

  Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, Professor Harold Hill.

• 1:00:01Speaker 03

  Hopefully without the Klan membership.

• 1:00:03Justin Roczniak?

  He...

• 1:00:04November Kelly?

  Ever since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to be a bridge between the US and Canada.

• 1:00:10Justin Roczniak?

  And he went around Detroit, talking to all the, you know, the wheelers and dealers, the, you know, the various highfalutin, you know, rich folk, right?

• 1:00:20November Kelly?

  Hmm. The muckymucks.

• 1:00:21Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22November Kelly?

  Fun thing to say.

• 1:00:23Justin Roczniak?

  He gave them all a real hard sell. And he just pissed them off. He just made them all mad at him.

• 1:00:29Speaker 03

  That sounds right. I mean, speaking of somebody who like grew up in Michigan, has spent my entire adult life in New York and like goes back every so often, just from that experience alone, when I go into like a bar that's in Michigan, people ask me where I'm from. And that's just from being like half shifted to the culture. You come in as like a real New Yorker into a Michigan establishment and you start wheeling, dealing? People don't cotton well to that shit.

• 1:00:57Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. No, this went poorly.

• 1:00:59November Kelly?

  Putting you in a barrel and throwing you over Niagara.

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:01:03Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:04Justin Roczniak?

  So Scott raised, in the end, $400,000, almost no money whatsoever for this. I believe it was going to be a $12 million bridge.

• 1:01:14Liam McAnderson?

  That's more than 200.

• 1:01:15Justin Roczniak?

  He.

• 1:01:16Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 1:01:18November Kelly?

  Yeah. Give me, give me $400,000.

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  All the locals just being like, can we just put this guy on a raft and push him out into Lake St. Clair?

• 1:01:26November Kelly?

  Dot me forward slash, I think it's still Avazandam, send me $400,000.

• 1:01:33Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 1:01:34November Kelly?

  There might be some tax implications there, but you know what?

• 1:01:38Speaker 03

  Tax implications there.

• 1:01:39November Kelly?

  I, I, I would really like, uh, one of the Olympus, uh, Micro Four Thirds cameras in sand beige. So, you know?

• 1:01:51Justin Roczniak?

  Scott went, in the process of raising this money, he went personally bankrupt.

• 1:01:58November Kelly?

  Hmm. Never, never let yourself as the deals guy, make the deals money, your money, you know?

• 1:02:05Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:05November Kelly?

  Never work on commission for this shit.

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  It's like, it's like in theater, never put your own money in the show, right?

• 1:02:10November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:11Justin Roczniak?

  He fled to Chicago. Where he took up a life of crime.

• 1:02:16Speaker 03

  Sweet ass.

• 1:02:19Justin Roczniak?

  This life of crime was short-lived. And he was involved in a botched robbery wherein he killed a drugstore clerk.

• 1:02:29Justin Roczniak?

  Was arrested and then committed [BEEP] in prison.

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 1:02:33Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, we got to believe that.

• 1:02:34November Kelly?

  Just, just in, he unalived himself in prison.

• 1:02:38Liam McAnderson?

  Sewer slide.

• 1:02:40Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm starting a new conspiracy theory. Uh, Russell T. Scott didn't kill himself.

• 1:02:48Speaker 03

  The tapes are, are, were blacked out during that period, you know?

• 1:02:52Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it was, uh, sort of, the wax cylinder was all mushy right there, yeah.

• 1:02:57November Kelly?

  I know it's just sort of an artifact of describing it this briskly, but it is very funny to imagine that in the 19th century, people wore their lives so lightly that it's like, now it's time for me to do a life of prime. Do the robbery, botch the robbery, kill the guy, go to prison, kill himself in prison. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Like, you know, everybody's in the kind of fast motion from old movies.

• 1:03:20Speaker 03

  Hey, this guy died. I gotta go to jail. It's time to kill myself, see?

• 1:03:24Justin Roczniak?

  You see, you see?

• 1:03:27Liam McAnderson?

  It sounds like you got a bad case of lead poisoning.

• 1:03:29November Kelly?

  Doing, doing the Buster Keaton bit where you dive off the high wire into the sort of like, through the pool into China, but instead of China, it's prison.

• 1:03:38Justin Roczniak?

  Keep lead poisoning in your mind. Anyway, so.

• 1:03:42November Kelly?

  Okay, I try not to.

• 1:03:45Speaker 03

  Clearly, I'd prefer not to, actually.

• 1:03:47November Kelly?

  I'm chelating shit all the time.

• 1:03:50Justin Roczniak?

  So the bridge didn't get built. You, you can see, um, some similarities, uh, in the bridge design with what they did eventually build. Um, I, I, I just find this structurally very interesting is that you have a single, you know, you have a pier for the suspension bridge, you have another pier for the suspension bridge. You have the normal suspension cables with the normal hangers, you know, the whole way across the river. And then unlike most suspension bridges, they were like, nah, fuck it. Build a regular bridge from the rest of the way. You just have the suspension cables with no hangers whatsoever. I.

• 1:04:35November Kelly?

  Hell yeah.

• 1:04:36Justin Roczniak?

  No one, no one else built something like this. I, except like, I think the Menai Straits Bridge. Um, uh, is, is, is like this, but it's maybe the wheeling suspension bridge too. Anyway, it's, it's weird and old fashioned as well as being huge.

• 1:04:53Liam McAnderson?

  That's what they call me. Yeah.

• 1:04:54Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. So anyway.

• 1:04:57November Kelly?

  Uh, listen, I'm the quickest on the draw for the self-deprecation. You can't beat me.

• 1:05:01Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, I know.

• 1:05:04Liam McAnderson?

  That's okay.

• 1:05:04Justin Roczniak?

  So other things are happening in the Detroit area.

• 1:05:09November Kelly?

  Yeah. Detroit's about to kill the planet.

• 1:05:11Liam McAnderson?

  That's right. Uh, what is it? What's that quote you like, Roz? Uh, uh, God made man, uh, Colt made Samuel Colt made them equal. Henry Ford made them all bastards.

• 1:05:21Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:05:23Liam McAnderson?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:23Justin Roczniak?

  Through the Model T Ford made people want to get, want to get, want to get up and go six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 12, 14, 22, 23 miles to the county seat. And it changed the territory. Um.

• 1:05:37Liam McAnderson?

  Six, seven.

• 1:05:38Justin Roczniak?

  We ruined.

• 1:05:38November Kelly?

  We, we, we, we are living. We, we, we have all sort of on a long enough timeline been run over by a Ford Model T.

• 1:05:45Justin Roczniak?

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• 1:05:48Justin Roczniak?

  Ford Model T is, uh, you know, obviously Henry Ford's product. It's, uh, very complex as consumer goods go. You know, the, you're selling this insane machine to everyone. Um, it has very high profit margins, especially if you're setting up this crazy production line for them and you convince everyone to buy them. Henry Ford becomes extremely wealthy and so did Detroit, right?

• 1:06:16Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:18Justin Roczniak?

  And this meant a Detroit Windsor Bridge seemed more likely to be financed. If there was just some more money floating around, right?

• 1:06:28November Kelly?

  You could drive your Model T over.

• 1:06:29Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly.

• 1:06:31Liam McAnderson?

  And you could be super antisemitic and.

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  You could, you could do that as well. Yeah.

• 1:06:35Liam McAnderson?

  And not have the decency to blow your [BLEEP] out on radio.

• 1:06:37Justin Roczniak?

  You could.

• 1:06:38Liam McAnderson?

  Blink that, I guess. I fucking hate Henry Ford, obviously.

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  I mean, you and I have that in common. Um, in, in the way, I will say it's like, again, somebody who grew up in Michigan, the way that the fucking Henry Ford museum and all of the other shit that is like a, a tribute to his legacy just whitewashes his long and storied history of antisemitism makes me fucking sick.

• 1:07:02Justin Roczniak?

  Well, I mean, that was another feature of the Ford Model T is that there was one lever that just set cruise control at 45 miles an hour. So you could read the Dearborn Dearborn

• 1:07:17Liam McAnderson?

  Dearborn.

• 1:07:18November Kelly?

  Ford Model T.

• 1:07:20Liam McAnderson?

  AKA eighty to eighty-five percent of our followers, frankly.

• 1:07:24November Kelly?

  Ford Ford Model T in traffic with an I bought this before he went crazy bumper sticker.

• 1:07:29Justin Roczniak?

  Honestly, though, yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:36Justin Roczniak?

  So we need another guy.

• 1:07:40November Kelly?

  Wait a second. Wait a second. That's not another guy. That's two other guys.

• 1:07:44Justin Roczniak?

  That's two other guys.

• 1:07:44Liam McAnderson?

  You lied to me.

• 1:07:46November Kelly?

  One of them's wearing correspondent shoes. Sick.

• 1:07:50Justin Roczniak?

  So you got Joseph Bauer and you got James Austin, right? James Austin is a Detroit guy, right? And he is a lead paint magnate.

• 1:08:04Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, no.

• 1:08:07Liam McAnderson?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:08:10Justin Roczniak?

  He's trying to save the bridge project, right? He hires just the guy to do it. Another salesman, Joseph Bauer, who works for JP Morgan and Company, right? He's a big New York City finance type. Again, he has this reputation

• 1:08:31Justin Roczniak?

  for saving bankrupt businesses, right? He revives the project. He drops the railroad deck and the provisions for such.

• 1:08:41Liam McAnderson?

  Into the river or metaphorically?

• 1:08:44Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, the bridge hasn't been built yet.

• 1:08:47Liam McAnderson?

  I was making a god damn it.

• 1:08:48Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:08:49Liam McAnderson?

  It would have been pretty cool if he did it in real life, though.

• 1:08:51Justin Roczniak?

  No, that would have been pretty funny. Yeah.

• 1:08:53Liam McAnderson?

  Watch this.

• 1:08:56Liam McAnderson?

  I get there in November.

• 1:08:57Justin Roczniak?

  Conceptually, the bridge is still quite similar, right? He does all the wheeling and dealing to make the bridge happen. The automotive interests are all of a sudden happy to help. Because again, Model T Ford's out, everyone's got a lot of money, right? You want to have people driving cars, right? And at this point, Ford had built, you know, the Model AA truck, right? So it actually-

• 1:09:28November Kelly?

  Ford Kills the Planet Part Two.

• 1:09:29Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, yeah, no, the Model AA is probably as significant as the Model T. Because suddenly you could ship stuff by truck. It was no longer like, you know, a crazy thing like it was before. Where it was like, well, this truck is only marginally better than a horse and cart.

• 1:09:50Speaker 03

  So what you're telling me is you could maybe take that truck and use it to ship durable goods over, say, a bridge?

• 1:09:57Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:09:58Liam McAnderson?

  Imagine that.

• 1:10:00Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, and by this time, the automotive industry was quickly becoming very transnational, right? You know, you could, you could go make some stuff in Canada, yes.

• 1:10:11November Kelly?

  I'm sorry Victoria isn't here for this one.

• 1:10:15Liam McAnderson?

  Kind of hormones you need for that?

• 1:10:18Justin Roczniak?

  To become the Ford Motor Company?

• 1:10:20Liam McAnderson?

  I don't-

• 1:10:21November Kelly?

  Oh, just whatever.

• 1:10:22Liam McAnderson?

  Well, I guess just a healthy dose of antisemitism and bad cars. And I remember my mom's 94 Ford Escort that she got after she was in an accident. And that's why my family switched back to Subaru. Because the Ford Escort was a garbage car for garbage people. I hope every single one of them burns, if you drive a Ford. Unless it's a GT, which you should give to me immediately, fuck you.

• 1:10:43November Kelly?

  Yeah, so you want the Ford GT, I want $400,000.

• 1:10:47Justin Roczniak?

  $200 from November Kelly specifically.

• 1:10:50November Kelly?

  I think you're, okay, listen, right, I'll make you, I'll make you a second deal.

• 1:10:54Justin Roczniak?

  Listen, I'm listening.

• 1:10:55November Kelly?

  If someone gives me $400,000.

• 1:10:58Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:10:59November Kelly?

  On God, swear that I will give you $200.

• 1:11:04Speaker 03

  Okay, I mean, look.

• 1:11:06November Kelly?

  That day.

• 1:11:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh, wow.

• 1:11:08November Kelly?

  So really, in many ways, like, you should be as invested in me getting the $400,000. Because like now you're like on commission functionally, you know, like you're getting a percentage.

• 1:11:17Speaker 03

  I don't think that's how that works.

• 1:11:19November Kelly?

  I think it is. I think it is. And I think this means that basically you should be doing everything in your power to encourage people to give me $400,000.

• 1:11:28Speaker 03

  Hmm, okay, I'll think about it. I'll think about it.

• 1:11:31November Kelly?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:11:33Speaker 03

  No promises.

• 1:11:34November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 1:11:36Justin Roczniak?

  So Joseph Bauer hires the steel firm McClintock Marshall of Pittsburgh to study and revise Fowler's design for the roadway-only bridge. They come back and say, this bridge is gonna cost $12 million.

• 1:11:55Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, boy. And that's a, that's a.

• 1:11:57November Kelly?

  That's in like old timey.

• 1:11:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, how much, how much money is that? Like, like, do you have a sense if you adjust that?

• 1:12:05Justin Roczniak?

  What's $12 million in 1920 or so?

• 1:12:09Speaker 03

  Inflation calculator. Let's see here. All right, I've got one that goes all the way back to 1913.

• 1:12:16Liam McAnderson?

  $195,151,200.

• 1:12:19Speaker 03

  Okay, 200 million?

• 1:12:21Liam McAnderson?

  120. I said 12 million, yeah. We'll call it 200 million, yeah.

• 1:12:26Speaker 03

  I mean, for a bridge now, that actually is.

• 1:12:29Justin Roczniak?

  That's pretty cheap, yeah. So $12 billion, goddamn. Nevertheless, they proceed, they start raising money under the auspices of the new Detroit International Bridge Company. They start hiring more contractors and subcontractors to make this thing happen. Now, McClintock Marshall is a steel fabricator and is, of course, interested in building a bridge that uses a lot of steel, right? Unfortunately for them, a new challenger appears.

• 1:13:01November Kelly?

  Oh.

• 1:13:09Justin Roczniak?

  Hi, it's Justin. So this is a commercial for the podcast that you're already listening to. People are annoyed by these, so let me get to the point. We have this thing called Patreon, right? The deal is you give us two bucks a month and we give you an extra episode once a month. Sometimes it's a little inconsistent, but you know, it's two bucks. You get what you pay for. It also gets you our full back catalog of bonus episodes so you can learn about exciting topics like guns, pickup trucks, or pickup trucks with guns on them. The money we raise through Patreon goes to making sure that the only ad you hear on this podcast is this one.

• 1:13:52Justin Roczniak?

  Anyway, that's something to consider if you have two bucks to spare each month. Join at patreon.com/ W T Y P pod. Do it if you want, or don't. It's your decision and we respect that. Back to the show.

• 1:14:16Justin Roczniak?

  So who do you call when you have a fucked up bridge design that needs to be fixed?

• 1:14:22Speaker 03

  Ghostbusters?

• 1:14:23Liam McAnderson?

  I was gonna say, I don't know. Who do you call? Yeah, we'll go with Ghostbusters. That's funnier than my fucking joke.

• 1:14:30Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, it's Ralph. You call Ralph Majewski.

• 1:14:33Liam McAnderson?

  You just call Ralph?

• 1:14:34November Kelly?

  The angriest Polish man in the world.

• 1:14:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:38November Kelly?

  Stanced up here a bit like that one photo of Theodore Herzl?

• 1:14:44Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:45November Kelly?

  Just imagining a sort of like a bridge homeland?

• 1:14:49Justin Roczniak?

  He, well, yeah, it's, uh, yeah.

• 1:14:52Speaker 03

  I mean, that's, that's just what I call Pittsburgh is the bridge homeland.

• 1:14:55Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. No, the Poles, the Poles build bridges. The Norwegians build tunnels. Um, anyway, so.

• 1:15:03November Kelly?

  Ancient problem.

• 1:15:05Justin Roczniak?

  Ralph Majewski. No, this is actually, uh, uh, uh, we'd have to do that in a different episode. Anyway. So Ralph Bajewski is one of our greatest Polish Americans, right? He's up there with Kazimir Pulaski, Gronk, Norm MacDonald.

• 1:15:23Liam McAnderson?

  Gronk.

• 1:15:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, Rob Gronkowski, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 1:15:27November Kelly?

  For a second in the notes, I thought you said Grok and we're claiming Grok is a sort of Polish American excellence.

• 1:15:33Justin Roczniak?

  No, Gronk. Maybe similar morally, I don't know.

• 1:15:40Liam McAnderson?

  Similar intellectually, and I love Rob Gronkowski, but that man, that man's brain is just one standard NFL, the Duke football.

• 1:15:47Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Norman Finkelstein.

• 1:15:51Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:15:51Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah, he's Polish. I didn't know that.

• 1:15:54Speaker 03

  Unproblematic fave, Norman Finkelstein.

• 1:15:58Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly. And Richard the Iceman Kuklinski.

• 1:16:01Liam McAnderson?

  You want to talk about unproblematic faves?

• 1:16:04November Kelly?

  Excellence in mob studies.

• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  Roz, are you Polish?

• 1:16:08Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:16:09Speaker 03

  Okay, well, then you got to put yourself on that list. You're also one of our greatest Polish Americans.

• 1:16:13Justin Roczniak?

  Listen, listen, listen, I, I'm not going to put myself on that list for the same reason that, what's his face?

• 1:16:22Justin Roczniak?

  Bauer didn't put his name on the Ambassador Bridge. He didn't think it was appropriate.

• 1:16:31Justin Roczniak?

  So Ralph Bajewski is the guy you called when your bridge was all fucked up, right? He, he is most famous for coming in and fixing the Quebec Bridge when the center span fell in the river, right? And he was like, I can fix that, right? He does other notable projects in the same era, right? Here's the Taconi-Palmira Bridge. That was one of his.

• 1:16:59Speaker 03

  Oh, where is that?

• 1:17:00Justin Roczniak?

  That is.

• 1:17:03Justin Roczniak?

  In Phila- well, it's in Philadelphia.

• 1:17:05November Kelly?

  The other half is in Palmyra.

• 1:17:09Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 1:17:11November Kelly?

  Okay. I feel like I've had seven or eight beers, but also I'm alarmingly sober. I feel like I've had seven or eight beers and like a sexy coffee with each one.

• 1:17:20Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I assume you are just like well into delirium at this point and we're gonna have to put you down like Old Yeller.

• 1:17:27November Kelly?

  I'm thinking, I'm, I'm, I'm seeing the millipedes, you know, like I'm.

• 1:17:31Liam McAnderson?

  Can you get a visit for the hat man soon? All right, we're doing great. Don't worry Nova, we've only got, oh, 18 more slides to go.

• 1:17:38November Kelly?

  I say that. It's, it's just the one millipede actually, and he's, he's kinda chill.

• 1:17:41Liam McAnderson?

  25 slides to go. I.

• 1:17:43November Kelly?

  I just assumed the millipede's pronouns, you know, and really I, I never thought to ask, so you know.

• 1:17:49Speaker 03

  The millipede's actually a they/them who is willing to go in whatever direction, actually. It's, it's an any pronoun millipede, so you're fine.

• 1:17:56November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:57Justin Roczniak?

  Here's, here, here's the fun thing about the Taconi Palmyra Bridge.

• 1:18:02Liam McAnderson?

  No.

• 1:18:02Justin Roczniak?

  Is that when I was in Engineering 101 at Draxel, they brought us out on a bus onto this bridge. This is.

• 1:18:09Liam McAnderson?

  And left you there to fix it?

• 1:18:10Justin Roczniak?

  No, this is a draw span right here.

• 1:18:12Liam McAnderson?

  Yep.

• 1:18:13Justin Roczniak?

  And they opened the draw span for us. Just.

• 1:18:17Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, that's sick.

• 1:18:18Justin Roczniak?

  So we could see it, right? And then there's, because this is so well balanced, right? With counterweights and all, there's actually a hand crank back here. And you can manually crank the bridge up or down.

• 1:18:34Speaker 03

  Did they let you crank the bridge?

• 1:18:35Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:18:36November Kelly?

  Oh, sick. You have a little like posthumous achievement now. God is gonna like dap you up, be like.

• 1:18:45Speaker 03

  I'm trying to.

• 1:18:46November Kelly?

  Cranked off a bridge.

• 1:18:47Speaker 03

  I'm trying to get to a crank that soldier boy joke and I can't get there. I just wanted to let you know that I was, I was marinating on that one.

• 1:18:54November Kelly?

  Crank that pole job boy?

• 1:18:57Liam McAnderson?

  Crank that pole job boy. Buck it.

• 1:18:59Speaker 03

  Sure. Yeah. Crank that. Crank that pole job boy. Yep. 10 out of 10. Let's go.

• 1:19:04Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:04November Kelly?

  I'm just, I'm just throwing bricks at this point.

• 1:19:08Liam McAnderson?

  Just a, just a white girl back grabbing a bunch of 20 footers. Yep.

• 1:19:13Justin Roczniak?

  He designed the, uh, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. He designed, here's the Henry Avenue Bridge. That's also in Philadelphia. Down here is-

• 1:19:22November Kelly?

  Named for the late Henry Avenue.

• 1:19:24Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. There's a subway tunnel in here that was never used.

• 1:19:28Speaker 03

  First, that was like supposed to be for Septa?

• 1:19:31Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, that was supposed to be for a Broad Street Line extension up to Manny.

• 1:19:35Speaker 03

  Manny Oak? Interesting.

• 1:19:36Liam McAnderson?

  Yep. That we never got because thanks for nothing, you motherfuckers.

• 1:19:40Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah. I blame all problems on Sherrell Parker.

• 1:19:43Liam McAnderson?

  Whose fault this is.

• 1:19:44Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly. And then of course down here is the Huey Long Bridge.

• 1:19:49Liam McAnderson?

  Oh yeah. We all didn't deal in Huey Long, number one. Hey, this had the hideous and, uh, fucking hilarious, hilarious corruption. I have people who get mad and it's like, actually Huey Long was a bastard. I don't care.

• 1:20:02Justin Roczniak?

  So yeah, his, his big thing though, these are all the original stuff except the Quebec Bridge. He did a lot of, you know, taking someone else's fucked up design and making it work.

• 1:20:13Speaker 03

  So this guy is fixer. This guy is good at bridges is what I'm hearing.

• 1:20:16Justin Roczniak?

  Really good at bridges. Um, I, one, one time I got to handle drawings with his actual signature on it. I was in awe.

• 1:20:25Liam McAnderson?

  Second posthumous, uh, God dapping up moment.

• 1:20:30Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:31Speaker 03

  So would you say that in that moment you were cranking that pole job boy?

• 1:20:37Liam McAnderson?

  That just sounds erotic.

• 1:20:38Speaker 03

  Erotic, if you will.

• 1:20:43Justin Roczniak?

  So in the case of the Ambassador Bridge, that's what his, he did. His firm was not engineer of record, but, um, identified a lot of places where the metallurgy could be improved and reduce the amount of steel needed.

• 1:20:55November Kelly?

  Doing a kind of like engineering A team where it's like, if you can find him, maybe you can hire Ralph Majewski.

• 1:21:04Speaker 03

  Ralph Majewski.

• 1:21:07Justin Roczniak?

  Um, you could reduce the amount of steel needed. You could reduce the size of like the stiffening trusses, things like that, so on and so forth. He didn't design the bridge, but he kinda designed the bridge, right? Uh, which was bad news for McClinic Marshall because it was gonna now come in under budget. Um, and but good news for them ahead of schedule, right? Cause they had a, a contract with Bauer that, okay, if you complete the bridge early, you're going to get a portion of the total revenue.

• 1:21:44Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 1:21:45Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:49Justin Roczniak?

  So, long story short here, they build the damn thing, right? And there's some stiff competition while this is being built because, uh, another engineering firm, uh, that eventually became Parsons Brinkerhoff and now, uh, WSB, uh, were building the Detroit Windsor Tunnel. Um, but that turned out to be a less practical alternative if you wanted to put trucks over it.

• 1:22:16Speaker 03

  Right. And that's, that's, I should say too, the Detroit Windsor Tunnel, uh, that is a passenger road tunnel that is still widely used, uh, by, by passenger vehicles because it is right in the fucking heart of downtown Detroit and downtown Windsor.

• 1:22:33Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it's like right there. There used to be like, you used to be able to take a nice bus through the tunnel.

• 1:22:40Justin Roczniak?

  You know, there was like a, they ran pretty frequently. I guess that got canceled recently.

• 1:22:45Speaker 03

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:22:46Justin Roczniak?

  Because of, because of Trump stuff.

• 1:22:48Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:22:49Liam McAnderson?

  Ugh.

• 1:22:49Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:52Justin Roczniak?

  You know, maybe back then there's folks, uh, worrying about the visual impact of the bridge.

• 1:22:58Speaker 03

  Shut up.

• 1:22:59Justin Roczniak?

  The navigation interests were all still really mad at it, but they. They do it. They just do it. They built the damn bridge.

• 1:23:06Speaker 03

  It's beautiful.

• 1:23:07November Kelly?

  The problem with doing that on the Niagara is that the um, uh, the M in NIMBY stands for microclimate.

• 1:23:14Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:23:15Speaker 03

  Blau.

• 1:23:17November Kelly?

  Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I'm, I'm locked in.

• 1:23:20Speaker 03

  There's a different, there's a different bridge up there actually closer to Niagara. Um, but this, I love this bridge. I really do. I just love the way it looks.

• 1:23:32Liam McAnderson?

  I really like it too.

• 1:23:33November Kelly?

  It's a, it's a pretty bridge.

• 1:23:35Justin Roczniak?

  Really good bridge. I love the signs.

• 1:23:37November Kelly?

  Yeah, sign's really good. I like, I like when things announce themselves in public engineering, you know? This is a printing office.

• 1:23:46Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:23:48Speaker 03

  It's sort of like, I, I miss it. Uh, you know, the, in downtown Brooklyn, the really big building that used to be owned by the Jehovah's Witnesses, that just said, uh, watchtower on the top of it in big red letters, but then it got sold to a real estate firm and they changed it. Now it just says, welcome?

• 1:24:08November Kelly?

  Oh, that fucking sucks.

• 1:24:09Speaker 03

  Terrible.

• 1:24:09Justin Roczniak?

  Wrong.

• 1:24:10November Kelly?

  No. Soon to have, soon to have the like cult, you know?

• 1:24:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, agree.

• 1:24:15November Kelly?

  Give, give me the kind of Gotham vibes.

• 1:24:17Speaker 03

  Cause it was so fucking ominous too, especially like on foggy days. You would see just the word watchtower rising up out of the fog and be like, what the fuck is that?

• 1:24:25Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:24:29Justin Roczniak?

  So, what we get out of this is a kind of weird suspension bridge. Cause again, no hangers on the approach spans.

• 1:24:42Justin Roczniak?

  It has an 1850 foot main span that sort of ekes out a hundred feet on its nearest rival at that point, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, to become the longest suspension bridge in the world.

• 1:24:56Liam McAnderson?

  No, it doesn't.

• 1:24:58Liam McAnderson?

  Nope.

• 1:24:59Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, it actually was.

• 1:25:01Liam McAnderson?

  Nope, nope, wrong.

• 1:25:03November Kelly?

  You're gonna interrupt a full Clarkson of the longest suspension bridge in the world.

• 1:25:10Justin Roczniak?

  World.

• 1:25:11November Kelly?

  In the world.

• 1:25:13Justin Roczniak?

  This is probably a little bit bittersweet for Ralph because he had now essentially designed the longest suspension bridge in the world, but was an engineer of record on it.

• 1:25:23November Kelly?

  Oh, this is the problem you get with being a hired gun, you know?

• 1:25:27Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:28Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:28Justin Roczniak?

  Also considering his previous suspension bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world.

• 1:25:35Liam McAnderson?

  In the world.

• 1:25:37Justin Roczniak?

  It opens on November 6, 1929, nine months ahead of schedule.

• 1:25:44November Kelly?

  November 6, 1929 is like you've been wiped out on the stock market, but hey, new bridge.

• 1:25:49Liam McAnderson?

  New bridge.

• 1:25:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:25:51Liam McAnderson?

  And prohibition's coming, prohibition's here, so you can go across the winter and just.

• 1:25:54Speaker 03

  That's right, you can go drive on it.

• 1:25:56Liam McAnderson?

  Get fucked up.

• 1:25:57Speaker 03

  Get absolutely hammered and then, you know, drive back home drunk in classic Detroit fashion.

• 1:26:01Liam McAnderson?

  It was 1929.

• 1:26:03Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's not even, it was like, oh, well, I didn't consume the alcohol in the United States. I'm fine. You can, you can sort of see this is the, the old Detroit entrance plaza here. Right? You know, this is sort of an old fashioned type of bridge where, you know, it, it's designed a little bit more for local traffic.

• 1:26:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, you just kind of like bop down the road, pop into the plaza and head across the bridge. You know, this is, you can see this on the map. This is well before there were any expressways or anything like that encircling Detroit. We're going to get to that in a little bit, but.

• 1:26:40Justin Roczniak?

  There's no, there's no freeway there, but one thing we love to do in America is really fuck up the bridge to shove more cars on it.

• 1:26:49November Kelly?

  Yeah. So by in, in a little bit, we mean right now.

• 1:26:52Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, right now, yeah.

• 1:26:53Liam McAnderson?

  Pretty much. Just one more lane. This is, this is. Bro, I swear, just one more lane, bro.

• 1:26:57November Kelly?

  One more line. Cities, cities, skyline, intersection, gore.

• 1:27:04Justin Roczniak?

  Well, yeah, I, I, I tried to pick like the two worst ones I could think of, which are the Brooklyn Bridge Manhattan approach.

• 1:27:10Speaker 03

  Oh, that, that interchange getting onto the Brooklyn is fucking abominable. It's so bad.

• 1:27:17Justin Roczniak?

  It looks really bad too. Just like it's aesthetic, it's aesthetically ugly. And that's what we wind up doing over a period of time to the Ambassador Bridge, which is where I'm going to hand it over to Josh because I have to use the restroom.

• 1:27:32Speaker 03

  Okay. Well, let's talk, let's talk here about the Eisenhower interstate system.

• 1:27:38November Kelly?

  Do not pause. Continue, continue going. It's like driving from West Germany to Berlin.

• 1:27:43Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:27:44Liam McAnderson?

  Do not stop this car.

• 1:27:45November Kelly?

  Do not stop, do not recognize any sort of like, uh, East German officials. Only always ask for a Soviet officer.

• 1:27:54Speaker 03

  Hang on. Am I East Germany or West Germany in this analogy?

• 1:27:57Liam McAnderson?

  My skin and I'm Justin Ross.

• 1:27:59November Kelly?

  A famously digitized VHS thing for British forces transiting across East Germany to get to West Berlin.

• 1:28:08Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:28:09November Kelly?

  In which because of the kind of fictions of the Cold War, you don't recognize East Germany as like an authority at all. So you always insist, no, I'm not going to listen to you. I want to talk to a Soviet officer.

• 1:28:20Speaker 03

  That's that, that makes sense. And I, I mean, similarly, I do not recognize the Eisenhower interstate system just as a concept. But unfortunately I am forced to take part in this charade, right? Cause the bridge, as, as Ross was saying, like it worked pretty fucking well as a bridge. Um, people were able to drive across it. There was a lot of traffic. It served as like one of the most important functional links between Detroit and Windsor and basically became the core artery through which transnational commerce was conducted between the United States and Canada. But what ended up happening, of course, after the war was the construction of the interstate system.

• 1:29:05Speaker 03

  And at that time, the interstate system began to encircle the city of Detroit itself. Uh, I think I'm going to have to fill time here because Roz is still in the bathroom.

• 1:29:17Liam McAnderson?

  Well, yeah, he does not pee fast.

• 1:29:19Speaker 03

  But what I'll say is.

• 1:29:21Liam McAnderson?

  He sits down to pee.

• 1:29:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, that's, that's, that's chill.

• 1:29:23Liam McAnderson?

  It's fine, but he takes forever. Every time.

• 1:29:27Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, the song, you know, the Tim and Eric song, I sit down on IP?

• 1:29:32Liam McAnderson?

  I'm not familiar.

• 1:29:32November Kelly?

  No.

• 1:29:33Speaker 03

  It's a classic. I can, I can, if it's useful, I can sing it for you.

• 1:29:37Liam McAnderson?

  You might as well, bud.

• 1:29:38Speaker 03

  Great. Here we go. Goes like this.

• 1:29:44Speaker 03

  What I've done here is I've sort of prepared in these slides, I think, a really striking example of what happened to Detroit and specifically what happened to the Ambassador Bridge as a result of that construction. So, uh, next slide, please.

• 1:29:58Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:30:01Liam McAnderson?

  I was having the goddamn news drop there for some reason.

• 1:30:04Speaker 03

  So this is a map of downtown Detroit, right? And there are, what I want you to note here, and I imagine you can probably mark these up a little bit, Roz. You see how like, there are those four arterial roads that lead into the center of town there? Like, if you go from the left there, uh, you can see you've got Michigan Avenue that sort of like goes like, straight to the left. You see what I'm talking about there?

• 1:30:30Justin Roczniak?

  I was thinking of, I was thinking of the interstates there, but yeah, you got Michigan.

• 1:30:33Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm talking, I'll get to the interstates in a sec, but first I just want to talk about the roads that existed before the interstates, right? So, uh, you've got Michigan Ave, uh, which sort of runs east-west. Yep, that's it.

• 1:30:45Justin Roczniak?

  That's it. Okay, good. I was, yeah. Woodward is this one, right?

• 1:30:49Speaker 03

  Woodward goes up. Grand River Ave is the one that goes between those two. It's the other diagonal.

• 1:30:54Justin Roczniak?

  That's the only one that's labeled.

• 1:30:56Speaker 03

  And then you've also got Grashit, which is the other diagonal going northeast. Yeah.

• 1:31:01Justin Roczniak?

  Okay.

• 1:31:01Speaker 03

  And, uh, alongside those, you have the two roads that run like along the riverfront, uh, which is Fort Street as well as, um, oh my God, why am I blanking on it? I know what this one is.

• 1:31:13Justin Roczniak?

  Is it Jefferson Avenue?

• 1:31:15Speaker 03

  Jefferson Ave, thank you.

• 1:31:16Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:31:16Speaker 03

  Um, and basically, thi- this is how it was designed. And, and you can see-

• 1:31:23Speaker 03

  This is not dissimilar from like, I don't know, there's, there's, there's a few cities that are sort of designed this way. Washington DC is not unlike this, where-

• 1:31:33Justin Roczniak?

  The, the, the actual like downtown Detroit is sort of in the, um, what, what do you might call the Baroque tradition of city planning? Yeah. It's, uh, you know, the, the sightlines are very important, the, the, the-

• 1:31:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:31:49Justin Roczniak?

  You know, the, the, you have something that not just looks good when you're walking around, but looks good even when you're looking at a plan.

• 1:31:59Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:31:59Justin Roczniak?

  It's a gorgeous city plan. Um, it's a shame what they did to it.

• 1:32:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Cause then you can see right around there, obviously they just fucked it up when they dropped the interstates down on it. And, uh, if you go ahead and, uh, click the, the next slide, you'll see that I put sort of an area of focus here. So this is what we're about to zoom in on. Uh, next slide, please.

• 1:32:22Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. Come on. So, here we are.

• 1:32:26Speaker 03

  This is the area that the bridge is around and you can actually see, uh, if you do one more click, it'll highlight where the bridge is.

• 1:32:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:32:37Speaker 03

  Um, that is, that is like the, the feeder off, right? And the construction of the interstates in the fifties and sixties just reoriented the entire downtown core around these expressways. And you can see it right here, the way that it sort of flows around. They go around downtown rather than into it and they just kind of dump traffic down into downtown, uh, mostly on game days, right? Tigers games and Lions games and shit like that. Now-

• 1:33:03Justin Roczniak?

  Detroit was one of the only cities that completed its inner downtown loop and, uh, that was a bad idea.

• 1:33:10Speaker 03

  Yes. Very bad idea. Um, because you can see that's the ambassador bridge right there near like Hubbard, Richard Cork Town.

• 1:33:21Speaker 03

  You can already notice a few things about the way that this is, just in terms of like, again, the flow of traffic and stuff like that. I just wanted to say too, Detroit, great city, has been plagued by federal disinvestment, local mismanagement for years. I will defend it until the day I die. Go Lions.

• 1:33:38Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:33:39Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 1:33:41Speaker 03

  So the traffic flow here, right? So all points into and out of the bridge feed into the expressways. So you've got the Fisher Freeway, which you can see is sort of off there to the left-ish. That runs south, all the way down to Miami along I-75, and then it runs north to Sioux-St. Marie, Ontario. That's the Fisher Freeway. And then you've got that spur there to the Jeffries Interstate 96, which runs west to Muskegon, Michigan, and then east to, well, Detroit, actually. It basically terminates in downtown Detroit.

• 1:34:17Justin Roczniak?

  Right.

• 1:34:18Speaker 03

  And then the Fisher and the Jeffries connected to I-94, that runs west through Kalamazoo to Chicago, en route to Billings, Montana, as well as east to Sarnia, Ontario. So like, the way that the interstates are designed, Detroit is the heart of all of it. And what that means is that all this transnational traffic needs to get dumped onto the bridge.

• 1:34:36Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:34:37Speaker 03

  And all access-

• 1:34:39Liam McAnderson?

  This sounds like a bottleneck.

• 1:34:42Speaker 03

  It's a bit of a bottleneck, yeah. And this is, it also means that like, the way that it looks now, and you can see this, all access to the bridge is grade separated through the highway. The entrances to the highway, you have to kind of go around in order to get there. And you can get on the highway from the John C. Lodge, Michigan Highway 10, but basically, most people are just going to take the tunnel unless they are trucks, because this entire traffic flow was mostly designed for trucking, right?

• 1:35:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, there's sort of an idea when you're, you know, in engineering, like, what are you designing a bridge for, right?

• 1:35:24Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:35:24Justin Roczniak?

  Which is, okay, you have a bridge, it's entirely full of fully laden trucks, and it has two feet of snow on it. In a blizzard.

• 1:35:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:39Justin Roczniak?

  With high winds. The Ambassador Bridge is the only one that actually experiences that condition.

• 1:35:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that that and the one a little bit further north up by Port Huron. But yes, um, it's it's because when a storm comes in off of Lake St. Clair, it it will it will fuck your shit up.

• 1:36:00Speaker 03

  But I've got another slide here because obviously we were talking about how it wasn't always this way. And if we go to the next slide.

• 1:36:09Speaker 03

  This is Detroit in 1968.

• 1:36:11Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:36:12Speaker 03

  And so this is before they constructed that entire sort of weird thing. So that you could easily feed on to both of the interstates via the bridge. And in this version, because again, this is sort of like retrofitting the bridge to fit the freeways. You have traffic to and from customs on these frontage roads that are on either side of the Fisher Freeway.

• 1:36:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:36:38Speaker 03

  Right there. But obviously, this is this is more of a bottleneck because of the fact that you have to figure out a way to fucking, you know, get on the highway. And again, it's not, it's not great from a traffic perspective. That is why they had to build all of that other bullshit. And we're going to talk a little bit later about how they built it. I want to go one more slide now.

• 1:37:00Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:37:02Speaker 03

  Because this is the original plan, right? And you can see the Ambassador Bridge kind of fits here.

• 1:37:08Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:08Speaker 03

  All you gotta do is go in off the road. You pop onto the bridge, pretty straightforward. But this because this bridge became more and more important for transnational freight traffic. They had to figure out a way to do something that it was not really originally designed for, right?

• 1:37:28Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, the the bridge sort of contains the seeds of its own destruction.

• 1:37:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:37:33Justin Roczniak?

  Um, you know, because the automotive industry couldn't be quite so transnational unless they built this bridge. And also like, yeah, you have a a totally adequate bridge for Detroit. You know, 1929, when I don't, they're only like a couple of years off from building the subway. You know, Michigan Central Station is taking in all these passengers. You know, the the bridge is not the only form of transportation out there.

• 1:38:01Speaker 03

  But of course, it ended up being so load-bearing. Because, you know, you can still ship things through the railroad tunnel, obviously, but particularly with the advent of like, you know, just-in-time logistics, you gotta keep shipping that stuff back and forth across the border on trucks, you know?

• 1:38:17Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. Yeah, the railroad timing is not good for just-in-time logistics.

• 1:38:23Liam McAnderson?

  No, you will get your shit when you get your shit. Stop asking us questions.

• 1:38:27Justin Roczniak?

  Tomorrow or four weeks from now.

• 1:38:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:30Liam McAnderson?

  Who's to say?

• 1:38:31Speaker 03

  Who's to say?

• 1:38:32Justin Roczniak?

  I have the plumber coming that morning.

• 1:38:35Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck you.

• 1:38:37Speaker 03

  So, obviously, the ambassador is a transnational bridge, so we might as well take a look at the Canadian side. That's the next slide here. This is Windsor, and you can see there in the upper-left there, that's the ambassador. You can also see a little bit further down the river off to the right there, that's the tunnel, the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, which again is used for passenger traffic. Now, what I'd like to... Just a couple things that you will notice from this, like, bigger picture. Toward the bottom there, you've got Ontario Highway 401, aka the McDonald Cartier Freeway. This is a controlled-access freeway. It runs all the way from Windsor, eastbound to Toronto, and then continues on to Quebec,

• 1:39:22Speaker 03

  where at that point it becomes Auto Route 20, and on through Montreal and Quebec City to Trois Pistols, which is where it stops. It is the busiest and at points widest highway in all of North America.

• 1:39:35Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:39:36November Kelly?

  Wow.

• 1:39:36Liam McAnderson?

  Damn.

• 1:39:38Speaker 03

  So...

• 1:39:39November Kelly?

  Somebody should throw a bunch of tariffs on all of this traffic, I think.

• 1:39:42Speaker 03

  That would be a good idea. Who do you think could do something like that?

• 1:39:45Justin Roczniak?

  A private company that owns a bridge.

• 1:39:49Liam McAnderson?

  Good news, assholes!

• 1:39:52Speaker 03

  The other, sort of, major important road here is Ontario Highway 3, aka Huron Church Road in the city of Windsor. You can see it run... That's what the bridge feeds on to, and you can see it runs from Windsor, goes down, then it goes east along Lake Ontario to Buffalo, Buffalo, New York. And you can also see there's that interchange right there with Highway 3. But the thing about Highway 3 is that it's not... Unlike 401, it's not a controlled-access highway. It's not even grade-separated by the time that you get to downtown Windsor.

• 1:40:31Speaker 03

  So if we take a look here at the next slide, we're gonna zoom in on this area right here and we're gonna see what happens with traffic going either to or from Windsor from the Ambassador Bridge. So, this is how you get onto and off the Ambassador Bridge from the Windsor side. Uh, I would like you to note here that again, this is not a great separated intersection, but-

• 1:40:57Liam McAnderson?

  Oh dear.

• 1:40:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. You see that? Isn't that cool?

• 1:41:01Liam McAnderson?

  Oh boy.

• 1:41:01Justin Roczniak?

  This is, uh, this has some major like Florida vibes.

• 1:41:05November Kelly?

  This is terrifying. This is like that one road in like, uh, Burma, you know, in the capital.

• 1:41:12Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, the one with like 16 lanes where they played soccer on that episode of Top Gear? Yeah.

• 1:41:16November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:17Speaker 03

  So you can already see here, um, this is a fucking traffic nightmare. And, um, I've got another bonus for you here, which is I took a couple of pictures from Google Street View to show you how it's signalized.

• 1:41:35Justin Roczniak?

  Fuck me, Brian.

• 1:41:39Speaker 03

  So that's, uh, that's the one side of the intersection and I pulled one from the other side as well, just so you can really get a sense for what this fucking intersection looks like.

• 1:41:48Justin Roczniak?

  Travel by train. Relax.

• 1:41:52Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, we're still allowed to.

• 1:41:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, do, do, do one more there. I took one from the McDonald's too, just so you can really see it. Isn't that beautiful?

• 1:42:00Liam McAnderson?

  I love the, I love the American streetscape. How can you not be romantic? Oh, this is Windsor, but how can you not be romantic about this? Yeah. How can you not be romantic about this? It's great.

• 1:42:11Justin Roczniak?

  Canadian, Canadian, Canadian tarmac has a certain je ne sais quoi about it.

• 1:42:19Speaker 03

  I'd say so.

• 1:42:20Justin Roczniak?

  There's always, there's always, whatever road you see in America that's appalling, there's always something worse in Canada.

• 1:42:26Speaker 03

  That's damn true.

• 1:42:29Speaker 03

  So I, I'd just be curious, like vibe check, right? How are we feeling about this?

• 1:42:34Liam McAnderson?

  Disastrous.

• 1:42:35November Kelly?

  Bad.

• 1:42:35Justin Roczniak?

  Bad.

• 1:42:36Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:36November Kelly?

  Seems bad.

• 1:42:37Justin Roczniak?

  Not very good.

• 1:42:37Liam McAnderson?

  November's flu gaming right now, so.

• 1:42:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:41Justin Roczniak?

  Every.

• 1:42:42November Kelly?

  If I'm doing it this often, is it still a flu game? Or do I just have like a kind of chronic condition?

• 1:42:47Speaker 03

  The podcaster's flu?

• 1:42:49Liam McAnderson?

  Podcasters.

• 1:42:49November Kelly?

  Give me $400,000.

• 1:42:51Liam McAnderson?

  Give her $400,000. I am sick of asking you for money. I'm sick of recording bonus episodes. Give us your fuck now. Now, please.

• 1:43:00November Kelly?

  No, no, no. I'm gonna keep working and I'm gonna keep donating the Patreon money, but on top of that, also the $400,000.

• 1:43:07Liam McAnderson?

  But also give her $400,000, yeah.

• 1:43:08Speaker 03

  Oh, that's wise.

• 1:43:09November Kelly?

  You see?

• 1:43:10Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Oh, look at you. Financial savvy.

• 1:43:12Justin Roczniak?

  What I gotta say here is that every border implies the asphalt required for the checkpoint.

• 1:43:21Liam McAnderson?

  I hate you.

• 1:43:22Justin Roczniak?

  You know, and the other question I have is, is this a railroad through, like a railroad crossing through the middle of all this bullshit?

• 1:43:30Speaker 03

  I don't.

• 1:43:31Liam McAnderson?

  I'll be right back.

• 1:43:33Speaker 03

  I don't know. I don't think so.

• 1:43:36Liam McAnderson?

  Stop the podcast entirely while I pay.

• 1:43:38Justin Roczniak?

  It must be, right?

• 1:43:40Speaker 03

  Wait, hold on.

• 1:43:41Justin Roczniak?

  Hold on a second. Alright, to Google Maps we go.

• 1:43:44Speaker 03

  I'm zooming in. I'm zooming in.

• 1:43:47Speaker 03

  Oh, it absolutely is.

• 1:43:49Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, obviously.

• 1:43:50Speaker 03

  That's fucking insane.

• 1:43:51Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that's a great, that's a great spot for that, you know?

• 1:43:54Speaker 03

  That railroad crossing is also not grade separated. That goes right in the middle of both of those fucking four lane roads uh, that are going to and from the Ambassador Bridge. That is so funny.

• 1:44:08Justin Roczniak?

  Obviously.

• 1:44:09Speaker 03

  God damn.

• 1:44:10Justin Roczniak?

  Well-used thing. I mean, they're maintaining it. It's got several. Oh no, this is a serious, uh, heavily used railroad. Yeah, I bet that.

• 1:44:19Speaker 03

  So you can see, you can see in the, in the parlance of this show where your problem lies.

• 1:44:24Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:26November Kelly?

  Somewhere in the midst of these 50 lines.

• 1:44:28Speaker 03

  Exactly. So, you know, on, on, we, on the Detroit side of things, they were able to solve most of the traffic flow issues by re-engineering that entire area. But on the Canadian side of things, you just kind of can't. There's too much shit there, and you can see as much, you know?

• 1:44:49Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I, I, well, you could, you know, what you could do is you could go and take a whole bunch of people's houses and kick them out, um, which they actually did, and then just not build the adjacent span they were gonna do.

• 1:45:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:45:03Justin Roczniak?

  Or you could, you know, they did that on the Detroit side. They never, um, and they did that on the Canadian side. They just never built the stuff, you know?

• 1:45:12Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:45:14Speaker 03

  So now I would like to introduce you, uh, again, we'll get back to sort of our attempts to solve these problems later, but I want to introduce you to another figure now, another, another character and sort of, I think, our main character for the remainder of this episode.

• 1:45:29Justin Roczniak?

  Our important character, yeah.

• 1:45:31Speaker 03

  So this is, uh, Manuel Matty Marrone. Matty Marrone.

• 1:45:36Justin Roczniak?

  Matty Marrone.

• 1:45:37Speaker 03

  Bought the bridge in 1979. Straight up bought it.

• 1:45:42Justin Roczniak?

  This is the important thing. This was always a private project.

• 1:45:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:45:46Justin Roczniak?

  This was done at no cost to taxpayers. This is what happens when the bridge is done at no cost to taxpayers.

• 1:45:54Speaker 03

  So.

• 1:45:55November Kelly?

  A guy who looks like a French Prime Minister fucked a haunted puppet. He buys your bridge.

• 1:46:01Justin Roczniak?

  He's Lebanese.

• 1:46:02Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. Uh, he's Maronite Catholic, and he was raised in the city of Detroit. Uh, he went to University of Detroit Jesuit High School, uh, for his high school and, uh, Notre Dame for his undergrad.

• 1:46:17Justin Roczniak?

  Boo.

• 1:46:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, boo. Or, I don't know. Um, and basically, his origin story, or his family's origin story, is that his dad owned some gas stations, as well as a general transportation and logistics firm that would over time grow to be among the 500 largest private companies in America, uh, do in fact, do, do in part to the fact that they, of course, owned the Ambassador Bridge. So I have a quote here from an article. This is a interview with Matty Marone, something called Corp Magazine?

• 1:46:54November Kelly?

  It's literally in corp.

• 1:46:56Speaker 03

  It's in corp, bro. It's on corp. Or corp with an

• 1:47:01Justin Roczniak?

  With an exclamation point.

• 1:47:03Speaker 03

  Yes, so I should pronounce it correctly. Corp, corp, corp. And

• 1:47:08Speaker 03

  And here he says, "The bridge was on the New York Stock Exchange and shares were traded. So we bought a few shares. In the 1970s, Warren Buffett was gonna buy the bridge and he put out a tender offer for more than the current stock price," says Marone. "We made a calculated decision to bid against the tender and said we'd buy any shares that were available right now. A lot of people who had tendered their shares withdrew them so that they could get their money right away. That technique was successful, so I bought 24% of the shares. Warren got 25% and then there were holdouts." And then the article just continues a little bit to say that then Warren Buffett reached out to Matty Marone and was like, "Hey, would you like to buy my shares?"

• 1:47:52Speaker 03

  Marone bought Buffett's shares, gained a controlling stake in the bridge. The rest is history.

• 1:47:57Justin Roczniak?

  Well, this is by way of another podcast returning guest, Charlie Munger, the guy who developed the cube.

• 1:48:07Speaker 03

  The cube?

• 1:48:08Liam McAnderson?

  The cube. We love you, cube.

• 1:48:12Justin Roczniak?

  University of California, Santa, yeah, the University of California. What is Santa Barbara, right? Student housing cube.

• 1:48:21Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, yes.

• 1:48:26Speaker 03

  So this is Matty. Let's go ahead and take a look at the next slide here because another thing that he would buy later on in 1995 is Michigan Central Station, one of Detroit's architectural gems.

• 1:48:38Speaker 03

  Both the bridge and this train station, I think are great examples of Matty Marone's overall MO, which is, I'm gonna buy this and sit on it and do some spectacular rent seeking.

• 1:48:50Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, what a dickhead.

• 1:48:51Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, he was, he was, he like did this, there were more properties in Detroit he owned, but this was always the flagship one. This was always like the biggest fuck you to the city of Detroit. It was like, I'm going to buy this building and I'm going to do nothing with it. And I'm going to see it crumble into dust and I am going to be expected, you have to say thank you to me for it. Quite, you know?

• 1:49:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, apparently like his whole thing was like, oh, I'm just going to get the US General Services Administration to lease the building from me. Um, but the GSA didn't need the fucking real estate. So like, nothing happened. It just sat there until finally the Fords bought it in 2018. And I fucking hate to hand it to the Ford Motor Company, but they did a beautiful, beautiful job of the renovation.

• 1:49:39Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, they, they did a fantastic renovation. And what's interesting is, because this station is situated on the Michigan Central Railroad. If M-Track does a Chicago to Toronto train, which they are likely to do in the near future, this would be the location for the new station, right? It would make a lot more sense for it to be here, rather than New Center where the station currently is. But what they're actually going to do is now the station has been fully renovated. They're actually building a shed across the street for the train station. So.

• 1:50:17Speaker 03

  Oh, what?

• 1:50:20November Kelly?

  Yeah, it's really important that you have a new shed, you know?

• 1:50:22Speaker 03

  I do love.

• 1:50:23Justin Roczniak?

  You don't want this old ugly building, do you?

• 1:50:25Speaker 03

  This hideous, this hideous building, yeah. God. Uh, anyway, next slide.

• 1:50:33Speaker 03

  1979 was the year that Central Cardage, the Marone Family Company, acquired the bridge. It was also the 50th birthday of the bridge. And that was when they, that was when they did the one and only capital improvement to the bridge that they would ever do, which is put lights on it. And everyone was like, yay, lights!

• 1:50:50Liam McAnderson?

  We did it!

• 1:50:51November Kelly?

  Veering off into, into the Niagara, you know?

• 1:50:54Speaker 03

  Well, it was actually lights on the, the like trusses and across the cables. It was, it was cool. It wasn't what the bridge needed, though. Let's put it that way, because traffic was getting worse. And you sort of saw from those slides earlier, the way that the traffic, sort of, the, the natural effect of the development of the interstate system, how that could contribute to worse traffic. And then, of course, NAFTA was signed in 1994, and it all went fucking haywire. By the time we get to the year 2000, 12.2 million cars are crossing the Ambassador Bridge every year.

• 1:51:33Justin Roczniak?

  I mean, you know, the worst part of this is, is, is always going to be the trucks, because it's all heavily laden trucks over there. I mean, this bridge, this, if, if you were like going to, this is probably the worst abused bridge in the world. Like, it really needs, it really needs a break.

• 1:51:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:51:52Justin Roczniak?

  I have no idea how it's still standing. I'm gonna be honest.

• 1:51:55November Kelly?

  I don't either.

• 1:51:58Liam McAnderson?

  You sound great.

• 1:52:02Speaker 03

  Uh, so, I, I did also want to say something that's kind of interesting, is that traffic, that was like the peak. Traffic on the bridge has actually declined considerably since then. Like, in 2025, there were only 5.4 million crossings totals, like, less than half. Of course, a good piece of that is that nobody wants to come to America anymore, but like, it's been a downward trend for a while.

• 1:52:22Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I also wonder, like, what was the proportion of cars crossing it versus the proportion of trucks?

• 1:52:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:52:28Justin Roczniak?

  The trucks are, the trucks are doing all the damage.

• 1:52:31Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:52:33Speaker 03

  So, next slide, please.

• 1:52:36Justin Roczniak?

  This poor thing.

• 1:52:37Speaker 03

  This poor bridge, this poor unfortunate bridge. This is a picture of road construction heading toward the Ambassador Bridge on southbound I-96 that was taken in late 2007. And this construction was part of something called the Gateway Project. Because eventually, Michigan was like, hey, we need to fix the traffic problem. Hey, Marone family, the guys who own the bridge, can you help? Can you, you know, do your damn job?

• 1:53:05November Kelly?

  I'm sure they were receptive.

• 1:53:06Speaker 03

  I've got bad news for you. You will not believe this, but as a matter of fact, they were not.

• 1:53:14Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, I'm shocked by this.

• 1:53:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, the project was to be spearheaded by the Detroit International Bridge Company. And basically, the idea is, hey, if you build these new interchanges and ramps, guess what? You get to build a second bridge. And you know, and then the second bridge, you get even more tools from it, isn't that great?

• 1:53:35Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it's amazing. It's a great idea.

• 1:53:38November Kelly?

  You should just do it. A natural monopoly, well, an unnatural monopoly into the prospect of second bridge.

• 1:53:43Speaker 03

  I know, right?

• 1:53:44November Kelly?

  Just by jingling sort of like money at them.

• 1:53:46Speaker 03

  In the famous words of Star Wars, Episode 1, "This is getting out of hand, now there are two of them." And by "them," I mean bridges. Because the first agreement between DIBC and MDOT, Michigan Department of Transportation, was basically executed in 2004. And at that time, DIBC was unable to acquire all of the necessary land, by which I mean, they didn't fucking try to do it, basically. And so what MDOT did was they bonded DIBC for $35 million. And they said, hey, now we're bonded, we, the state of Michigan, will seize this land via eminent domain. So you don't have to worry about even buying the land, all you gotta do is build the ramps.

• 1:54:30Liam McAnderson?

  I do not wish to create joy there with you, sir.

• 1:54:33Justin Roczniak?

  I love America where the government will seize your land and hand it over to a private corporation. It's amazing.

• 1:54:44Speaker 03

  Interestingly, there then ended up being a 2006 ballot referendum in the state of Michigan about whether or not they, the state could do shit like this in the future, largely in response to this deal.

• 1:54:59Speaker 03

  And to the credit of the voters in the state of Michigan, they all said, "Yeah, no, you can't do that from here on out."

• 1:55:08Speaker 03

  So, rather than building the ramps as agreed, even though they started construction late 2007, they just sort of did their own shit instead.

• 1:55:17November Kelly?

  Just freestyle it.

• 1:55:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, they just were like, whatever.

• 1:55:20Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, just do something else, yeah.

• 1:55:21Speaker 03

  And here I've got a quote from an appeals court judgment. This is, "By June 2009, among other claims, MDOT alleged DIBC was constructing Part A according to a conflicting design, which was not approved by MDOT, the Federal Highway Administration, or the city of Detroit." Things that they were doing: constructing permanent toll booths in the location where they said they were constructing access easement drive?

• 1:55:45November Kelly?

  How, how permanent are we talking? Are we talking like sort of pillboxes, you know?

• 1:55:50Speaker 03

  As permanent as possible, to generate as much revenue as possible.

• 1:55:54Justin Roczniak?

  What is like a really permanent toll booth? Like, are we talking like some kind of like-

• 1:55:58November Kelly?

  A portcullis.

• 1:55:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:56:00Justin Roczniak?

  Like some kind of like Nazi bunker.

• 1:56:03November Kelly?

  Got the like sort of firing slits for arrows, they can dump boiling water onto the hood of your car.

• 1:56:08Speaker 03

  That's right. Broad sides at every semi truck, absolutely.

• 1:56:11Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, you wouldn't need a second car for that scene in, what's it, Godfather.

• 1:56:17November Kelly?

  Yeah, true.

• 1:56:19Justin Roczniak?

  Oh wait, no, they did that from the toll booth, but now it'd be formalized.

• 1:56:22Speaker 03

  Right. Installing facilities including auto fueling pumps in the location where it agreed to construct one of the ramps?

• 1:56:31Speaker 03

  So they were just like, rather than building this federally and state mandated ramp, we're going to build a gas station.

• 1:56:38November Kelly?

  Just sandbox mode, you know?

• 1:56:41Speaker 03

  Installing facilities including underground fuel tanks in the location where they agreed to construct another ramp. So basically, rather than building the ramps, they built a bunch of truck stops. That, that's what they did. And the state was like, "Fuck you, stop." And it went back and forth for a very long time. And finally, it came to a head in 2012, five years after construction started. Next slide, please.

• 1:57:07Speaker 03

  This is the Wayne County Jail on Clinton Street in downtown Detroit.

• 1:57:12Justin Roczniak?

  Oh.

• 1:57:13Speaker 03

  The court got so sick of Matty Marone and his aide Dan Stamper's bullshit that they held them in contempt and sent them to jail.

• 1:57:22November Kelly?

  Yes, yes, this is the move. This is always the move with corporate malfeasance.

• 1:57:28Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, we're, we're prison abolitionists, but those guys go dead fucking last.

• 1:57:32Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:57:33Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:34Speaker 03

  And I do want to say for reference, Matty Marone was 85 years old at the time.

• 1:57:37Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck him right in his dead geriatric face.

• 1:57:42Speaker 03

  And that actually put the fear of God in them. Uh, in February, the very next month, Detroit International Bridge Company was like, hey, we're forming a special committee. It doesn't have Matty Marone on it. And they finished the fucking thing in seven months.

• 1:57:56Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean.

• 1:57:59Liam McAnderson?

  Amazing what happens to your whole guys in contempt, you dead little bitch.

• 1:58:01Justin Roczniak?

  They built, they built the approaches for the bridge that they didn't build.

• 1:58:08Speaker 03

  It's so good. It's so good.

• 1:58:12Speaker 03

  So you would think at this point, okay, you know, they, they built those ramps. The whole situation with the Marones, it's done, it's dusted. Great. Uh, I've got bad news for you again, because remember how there was going to be another bridge?

• 1:58:31Speaker 03

  Well, they didn't want anybody building the bridge other than them. And they had heard word that there was going to be a bridge built by Canada. Because Canada, Canada realized, wait, shit's fucked. We need to do our own thing.

• 1:58:46Speaker 03

  And so Canada got underway with this project to build a new state funded bridge. Uh, they established a crown corporation called the Windsor Detroit Bridge Authority. That was in 2012. And they were like, oh, what will it take to get a new bridge going? And so the Marones noticing the threat, put a proposal on the Michigan ballot for November of that year, 2012. That would have required the majority of voters in both the entire state of Michigan, as well as every municipality potentially affected by the bridge, to vote in favor of it in a separate election.

• 1:59:14November Kelly?

  What's wrong with total democracy?

• 1:59:16Liam McAnderson?

  Jesus. You do us again, you, it's a, it's a tweet again. You just appreciate why I let it install and simply shot everybody.

• 1:59:24Justin Roczniak?

  Fox, you gotta get educated. You gotta know when to vote no on a ballot measure. I know a lot of them sound good, but.

• 1:59:32Speaker 03

  Well, and here I have one of the small pieces of good news in this overall saga. If we pull up the next slide here.

• 1:59:42Speaker 03

  It just got fucking obliterated. 60% of voters said, "No fucking way."

• 1:59:47Justin Roczniak?

  Hell yeah.

• 1:59:50Speaker 03

  So I guess last bit is just to follow up on what they've done now with this wonderful bridge. Uh, next slide. New bridge. You can see they're over on the west side of Windsor there, right across the Detroit River. That is a brand new span.

• 2:00:05Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 2:00:06Speaker 03

  It's called the Gardie Howe Bridge. It's almost done. They're gonna start testing like this week. In fact, they already have its name for legendary Detroit Red Wings hockey player Gardie Howe, who is a born and raised Canadian, who's also a Detroit legend.

• 2:00:18Liam McAnderson?

  Mr. Hockey, man.

• 2:00:19Speaker 03

  What?

• 2:00:20Liam McAnderson?

  Mr. Hockey.

• 2:00:21Speaker 03

  Mr. Hockey.

• 2:00:21Justin Roczniak?

  Mr. Hockey, yeah.

• 2:00:23Speaker 03

  You can see on both sides-

• 2:00:24Liam McAnderson?

  He invented it, actually.

• 2:00:25Speaker 03

  He did. The man who invented hockey. Uh, and you can see on both sides, you have controlled access entrances. You've got big old customs facilities on either side of the border. Traffic from the USA flows directly onto 401. Traffic into the USA flows directly from 401. And you've also got this really nice, big exchange right there in Delray, which goes right onto the Fisher Freeway going both ways. Perfectly designed, wonderful bridge. If you take a look at the next slide, you'll see that it's also very beautiful. I really like this bridge a lot.

• 2:00:55Justin Roczniak?

  I just wanna improvise something here for a second.

• 2:00:58Speaker 03

  Oh yeah.

• 2:00:59Justin Roczniak?

  Just to, uh, just to show you, you know, never fucking trust private industry.

• 2:01:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:05Justin Roczniak?

  I'm gonna bring this thing over here. They built the approach ramps for the bridge they would have the monopoly on.

• 2:01:14Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:01:15Justin Roczniak?

  Like, they built it. They eminent-domained and demolished the houses of many Canadian people in Canada. Right? For to build the second span.

• 2:01:28Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:01:29Justin Roczniak?

  They refused to build it.

• 2:01:31Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:01:32Justin Roczniak?

  The Canadians had to intervene. Anyway. How do I?

• 2:01:37November Kelly?

  Well, you know, Canadians famously are very like hot tempered and unreasonable people.

• 2:01:41Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 2:01:42Justin Roczniak?

  Or you want us to build the bridge, eh?

• 2:01:44Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, we'll show you, eh?

• 2:01:47November Kelly?

  Oh, that is pretty.

• 2:01:48Justin Roczniak?

  It's a big bridge.

• 2:01:49Speaker 03

  It's a great bridge. I love this bridge.

• 2:01:51November Kelly?

  It's a bit Santiago Calatrava, but in a positive way.

• 2:01:54Justin Roczniak?

  Well, it's, you know, the, the.

• 2:01:56Liam McAnderson?

  Calatrava's got shooters out here.

• 2:01:58November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 2:01:59Liam McAnderson?

  Not us.

• 2:02:00Justin Roczniak?

  Honestly, it's just a huge.

• 2:02:01November Kelly?

  So do I, of myself, you know, like.

• 2:02:05Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, you got like 20 minutes and, oh, ah, well, if she dies, we just split the Patreon two ways.

• 2:02:13Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, but the podcast won't be as good.

• 2:02:15Speaker 03

  What about the $400,000, though?

• 2:02:17Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, well, well.

• 2:02:18November Kelly?

  Hmm. I have, well, the thing is, I don't even have like, I, I would need to do another will and then I would have to be like, first thing in the will, Josh gets $200, but only if I get the $400,000.

• 2:02:30Speaker 03

  And only if.

• 2:02:32November Kelly?

  Yeah, otherwise, you know, Josh gets nothing.

• 2:02:35Speaker 03

  Oh, my god!

• 2:02:36November Kelly?

  Hmm. In fact, I'm gonna ask my lawyer to see if there's a way if we can like charge you once I die.

• 2:02:40Speaker 03

  Come on, no, no!

• 2:02:41Liam McAnderson?

  Genius.

• 2:02:42November Kelly?

  Assess some kind of like fees on you, you know?

• 2:02:46Speaker 03

  I like the idea of a reverse will, where it's like, here are all of the people.

• 2:02:49Liam McAnderson?

  I've come to collect.

• 2:02:50Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 2:02:52November Kelly?

  Yeah, it's like, this is the guy that I want to pay for my funeral.

• 2:02:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:58November Kelly?

  It's a good idea. I wish, I, I just invented it on a panel. Like, I, I, I think, I think we should, we should, yeah, we should have those, to be real.

• 2:03:06Speaker 03

  But like, you can see this bridge, like, I, I sailed under this, I, I actually, uh, last time I was in Michigan, I went on a cruise down the Detroit River and we went under the bridge. It's fucking great. It's a great bridge. It's a great bridge. Um, it's, uh.

• 2:03:18November Kelly?

  Still got that new bridge smell?

• 2:03:19Speaker 03

  Yep, yep. Uh, it was originally budgeted at $1 billion Canadian. The final cost was actually 3.8 billion Canadian dollars, but.

• 2:03:26Liam McAnderson?

  All right.

• 2:03:27Speaker 03

  The great news for the United States.

• 2:03:29Justin Roczniak?

  Should've got Majewski on the job.

• 2:03:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 2:03:32Liam McAnderson?

  We did this for $9, fuck you.

• 2:03:36Speaker 03

  The great news for the United States is that we didn't have to pay for a penny of it. The whole fucking thing was paid for by the Canadian government.

• 2:03:42Liam McAnderson?

  Suckers!

• 2:03:43November Kelly?

  We're building a bridge and Canada's gonna pay for it.

• 2:03:46Speaker 03

  Literally.

• 2:03:47November Kelly?

  Isn't this the same bridge that Trump is trying to shut down because he thinks the US got a raw deal on it?

• 2:03:52Speaker 03

  I was about to say, uh, yes, uh, so this bridge is gonna be told on the Canadian side going into the US, but not the other way. It's owned 50/50 by the governments of Michigan and Ontario. What a beautiful and elegant solution to this longstanding problem. They get its private money out of the equation and fixes both the political issues and the issues around traffic engineering. What could possibly stop this wonderful bridge from opening? What could it be?

• 2:04:15November Kelly?

  One FIFA prize, Peace Prize winner.

• 2:04:18Speaker 03

  What could it be?

• 2:04:19Justin Roczniak?

  Like New Jersey, uh, you have to pay the get out of Canada tax.

• 2:04:27Justin Roczniak?

  Anyway.

• 2:04:27Speaker 03

  So I think we all know what it is and it's on, of course, the next slide here.

• 2:04:30Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, the orange guy.

• 2:04:32November Kelly?

  As everyone knows, the country of Canada has treated the United States very unfairly for decades. Now things are turning around for the USA and fast. But imagine, Canada is building a massive bridge between Ontario and Michigan. They own both the Canada and the United States side and of course built it with virtually no US consent.

• 2:04:54Speaker 03

  No, US content is what it's saying.

• 2:04:57November Kelly?

  Excuse me.

• 2:04:59Justin Roczniak?

  People should have been listening to this podcast when they, uh, when they were building it.

• 2:05:04November Kelly?

  President Barack Hussein Obama, finally, has stupidly gave them a waiver so they could get around the Buy American Act, not use any American products, including our steel, is capitalizing at random.

• 2:05:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:05:16November Kelly?

  Now the Canadian government expects me, as President of the United States, so I call my grandpa, to permit them to just take advantage of America. What does the United States of America get? M dash, absolutely nothing.

• 2:05:31Speaker 03

  Nothing!

• 2:05:32November Kelly?

  Ontario won't even put US spirits, beverages and other alcoholic products, comma, on their shelves, comma. They are absolutely prohibited from doing so and now on top of everything else, Prime Minister Carney wants to make a deal with China, M dash, which will eat Canada alive. We'll just get the leftovers. I don't think so. The first thing China will do is terminate all ice hockey being played in Canada and permanently eliminate the Stanley Cup.

• 2:06:00Speaker 03

  That is my favorite part of the entire fucking thing. China is going to get rid of hockey.

• 2:06:06Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:06November Kelly?

  President Xi, please.

• 2:06:08Justin Roczniak?

  To unperson, um, what's his name?

• 2:06:11Liam McAnderson?

  Lord Stanley, you dumb bitch.

• 2:06:13November Kelly?

  Send J twenty Chengdu fighters to permanently eliminate the Stanley Cup.

• 2:06:18Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yeah. And then give it back to its rightful owners, the Boston Bruins. Fuck you.

• 2:06:23November Kelly?

  The tariffs Canada charges us for our dairy products have for many years been unacceptable, putting our farmers at great financial risk. I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them. And also importantly, Canada treats the United States with the fairness and respect that we deserve. We will start negotiations, comma, all caps, immediately. With all that we have given them, we should own, comma, perhaps, comma, at least one half of this asset. The revenues generated because of-

• 2:06:52Speaker 03

  We literally do! If it's a bridge, it's co-owned by the two sides of the fucking bridge!

• 2:06:59November Kelly?

  The revenues generated by, because of the US market will be astronomical. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump.

• 2:07:11Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, sir. So, so. I mean, honestly, if, if, I mean-

• 2:07:16November Kelly?

  Worst safety third I've ever read.

• 2:07:18Justin Roczniak?

  It's probably, yeah, no, it's probably not true, but if China does want to kill Wayne Gretzky.

• 2:07:25Liam McAnderson?

  They can do it.

• 2:07:26Justin Roczniak?

  Protect that man.

• 2:07:26Liam McAnderson?

  Guys, no, guy sucks. Uh, uh, yeah, uh, sorry, uh, Bobby Orr was better at hockey.

• 2:07:32Speaker 03

  Can he, can he take out the US men's hockey team while he's at it?

• 2:07:35Liam McAnderson?

  We can hope. Jesus, fucking, I hate those pricks. So much Hitler floating around in that locker room, man.

• 2:07:42Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that sounds about right, yeah.

• 2:07:45Speaker 03

  It turns out, the Marones, not yet out of the game.

• 2:07:50Liam McAnderson?

  No.

• 2:07:50Speaker 03

  Next slide.

• 2:07:51Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, hold on a second. Where did the mouse go? There it is.

• 2:07:55Liam McAnderson?

  Jesus Christ.

• 2:07:56Justin Roczniak?

  Do the thing.

• 2:07:57Liam McAnderson?

  I'm gonna kill myself and then I'm gonna kill you.

• 2:07:59Speaker 03

  They've gone for one last hail Mary.

• 2:08:01Liam McAnderson?

  Oh boy.

• 2:08:02Speaker 03

  Matthew Marone, the son of Matty, has gone for noted Epstein associate Howard Lutnick.

• 2:08:09Liam McAnderson?

  Oh my god.

• 2:08:10Speaker 03

  To get him to block the opening of the bridge.

• 2:08:12Liam McAnderson?

  What?

• 2:08:13Speaker 03

  There were two New York Times articles. One was published on February 10 that Marone actually met with Howard Lutnick right before that fucking post went out. And also, the Marones donated $1 million to a Trump super PAC.

• 2:08:35November Kelly?

  I mean, listen, I'm making $400,000 or not, but I wish to be by saying, "Give me $400,000."

• 2:08:42Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:08:43November Kelly?

  For Trump to make a million dollars by just tweeting out some bullshit, that's...

• 2:08:48Liam McAnderson?

  That's unfair.

• 2:08:50November Kelly?

  It's not. Give me $400,000.

• 2:08:52Liam McAnderson?

  Give her $400,000 and then she can go to bed, grandpa.

• 2:08:55November Kelly?

  Thank you for your attention to this matter.

• 2:08:58Justin Roczniak?

  Here is the thing. Capitalists are completely irrational. You know why? Because we all know, more traffic lanes means more traffic, right?

• 2:09:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:09:09Justin Roczniak?

  Because there is a new bridge, there will also be more traffic going across the Ambassador Bridge.

• 2:09:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:09:14Justin Roczniak?

  It is in their interest either to support the new bridge, or they are completely allowed to build their own new bridge. And they will make more money off of building that new bridge. If they build it, this is, I, I, this, this is, okay, this is the thing about like the abundance stuff that I never got. Is like, okay, if you give capitalists in, you know, a way to make more money in the future by spending some money now, they don't do it. They don't, they never fucking do it.

• 2:09:50Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:09:50Liam McAnderson?

  Scared money don't make money, Roz.

• 2:09:54November Kelly?

  It's always, it's always as if these people aren't actually that smart with their money.

• 2:09:58Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, that's crazy.

• 2:09:59Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, the fucking, the fucking railroads make enough money each year to build out a high-speed rail network in all of America. What do they do with it? Stock buybacks?

• 2:10:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just they they need to preserve their capital at any possible cost, even if making concessions to other competitors would actually increase their overall profit, which it would, right?

• 2:10:26Justin Roczniak?

  They just extract rent. There's no value added. They just extract rent.

• 2:10:32Speaker 03

  So.

• 2:10:32November Kelly?

  I see. I see why you put it in this next slide.

• 2:10:35Speaker 03

  Next slide, please.

• 2:10:36November Kelly?

  Which is for completely unrelated reasons.

• 2:10:37Speaker 03

  Next slide, please. This is the Glock 23, which is a compact striker-fired handgun, chambered for the 40 Smith and Wesson cartridge, in package to serve as a reliable duty or concealed carry option. It pairs a 4.02 inch barrel with a polymer frame and fixed sights for a compact footprint and consistent handling. The V series retains Gen 5 ergonomics, including an interchangeable backstrap system and the extra slide stop lever and Glock's marksman barrel with an N D L C finish on key components. The slide features front serrations for positive manipulation and the frame includes an accessory rail for lights or attachments.

• 2:11:13November Kelly?

  The only add to you here.

• 2:11:14Justin Roczniak?

  Listen to Bloodwork Podcast.

• 2:11:16Liam McAnderson?

  Listen to Bloodwork.

• 2:11:17Speaker 03

  I'm not sure how this got here. I'm sorry. I don't know how this got here.

• 2:11:20November Kelly?

  You went into a kind of fugue state. It was crazy. Your eyes went completely black.

• 2:11:29Liam McAnderson?

  I this, I gotta tell you, this episode has been bordering on delirium, and this is a short one by all standards.

• 2:11:38November Kelly?

  It has you bordering on delirium.

• 2:11:40Liam McAnderson?

  You need to go to bed, grandpa.

• 2:11:45Justin Roczniak?

  And they're hurting a beautiful bridge doing it. It's such a nice bridge.

• 2:11:49November Kelly?

  arthritis. Thanks for the Niagara Falls.

• 2:11:54Liam McAnderson?

  Next slide, please. Jesus.

• 2:11:55Speaker 03

  Next slide, please. That has been my presentation. These are my sources.

• 2:11:59November Kelly?

  Thank you for your time.

• 2:12:00Liam McAnderson?

  Next slide, please. Oh, we have a safety podcast on this third.

• 2:12:04Justin Roczniak?

  On this podcast called Wayne Gretzger. Oh, hold on a second.

• 2:12:09November Kelly?

  Wayne Gretzger?

• 2:12:11Liam McAnderson?

  Wayne Gretzger.

• 2:12:12Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, God, Wayne Gretzger.

• 2:12:13November Kelly?

  Not that I'm not slurring as well, but.

• 2:12:16Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:12:17Justin Roczniak?

  Wayne won here.

• 2:12:19Liam McAnderson?

  No, that's a voicemail. Don't play that.

• 2:12:21Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, don't play that. Okay. Wait, no, I deleted that shit.

• 2:12:24Liam McAnderson?

  It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

• 2:12:30Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, that's just, that's just Wade recapping the Liverpool match. That's again, we, no, no, no, no, we're recording tomorrow with the, with the batting around folks. It's no big deal.

• 2:12:42Justin Roczniak?

  Dear Justin, November, Victoria, Devon, any guests, and yay Liam.

• 2:12:49Liam McAnderson?

  Hooray.

• 2:12:51Justin Roczniak?

  This safety third involves rotating knives, hubris, and the hazards of life on a small farm. I grew up on a sheep farm in the Pacific Northwest and every time around lambing season,

• 2:13:10Justin Roczniak?

  we would put down layers of straw in the stables of the barn. So the newborn lambs and their mothers would have soft places to rest.

• 2:13:20Liam McAnderson?

  Oh.

• 2:13:21Justin Roczniak?

  To automate this process,

• 2:13:27Justin Roczniak?

  my father purchased a power takeoff driven bale chopper. See attached photo for an example. For those who are not aware, a power takeoff is, um, you, you, you, you take off the power from like a tractor or a pickup truck or something like that by means of a belt. It's like you, you stick something on the, the wheel and you take off the power. It's, it's extremely dangerous and stupid, but farmers love them. Anyway.

• 2:14:02Justin Roczniak?

  It's very easy to injure yourself extremely badly in like disgusting and horrible ways.

• 2:14:08Liam McAnderson?

  Good news. We have a safety, we have a segment on this podcast called Safety Third, which I assume is unrelated.

• 2:14:16Justin Roczniak?

  The bale chopper with its dozens of rapidly splitting, spinning blades would fluff up the bales of straw, dramatically increasing the amount of bedding you would get per bale and blow it out of the discharge up here.

• 2:14:34Liam McAnderson?

  Love to blow it out of the discharge.

• 2:14:36Justin Roczniak?

  Hold on a second. It had a snorkel of a discharge spout where you could aim the straw much like a snow blower, allowing for drive by bedding refreshment.

• 2:14:49Justin Roczniak?

  This story is in regards to the end of the lambing season. When the tons of now sodden straw had to be laboriously mucked out, layer by layer and hauled to the compost pile.

• 2:15:04Justin Roczniak?

  My father, wanting to get as much use out of this rather specialized attachment as he could, decided that he would feed the manure coated bedding into the chopper and aim it.

• 2:15:20November Kelly?

  Oh, gets chopped on the way in and it gets chopped again on the way out. And you're definitely not gonna create a kind of funnel of high powered sheep shit.

• 2:15:30Justin Roczniak?

  You're chopped but not um, thank God. He decided he would feed the manure coated bedding into the chopper and aim at the compost he, so it'd be aerated and break down faster, theoretically leading to better compost. All went well for the first couple hopperfuls. The finely chopped mixture was piling up nicely. However, as the density of the material increased, the chopper quickly jammed. In the process of unjamming the chopper, the discharge spout was unbolted for access,

• 2:16:13Justin Roczniak?

  leaving an opening directly to the impeller at the heart of the machine, which had become packed tight with the poop coated straw.

• 2:16:24Speaker 03

  I think I know where this is going and I am not excited.

• 2:16:27November Kelly?

  And it's, it's sending out psychic beams in every direction like, hey.

• 2:16:36Justin Roczniak?

  For anyone listening who's not aware, an impeller is sort of the, it's the part, it's the spinny part of the pump that moves the stuff around, hopefully water in this case.

• 2:16:49Speaker 03

  Sheep shit, just jammed with sheep shit.

• 2:16:52Justin Roczniak?

  Horrible, horrible shit, yeah. I was given a garden hose and told to aim the stream at the intake and the outlet of the chopper to help break down what was binding the machine up. As the gallons of water built up inside it, my father, who was sitting mere feet from the discharge.

• 2:17:14Justin Roczniak?

  The discharge opening redlined the tractor and worked the clutch trying to unjam the attachment.

• 2:17:24Justin Roczniak?

  It wasn't quite a Herculean task, but the solution was similarly a Gian.

• 2:17:31November Kelly?

  Yeah, I've had days like this.

• 2:17:35Justin Roczniak?

  And then it happened.

• 2:17:37November Kelly?

  Oh, no.

• 2:17:37Justin Roczniak?

  The manure straw mixture had been diluted enough. Pollution is a solution to pollution. It had been diluted enough that the impeller was finally able to rotate again.

• 2:17:50November Kelly?

  Sweet.

• 2:17:51Justin Roczniak?

  I got to witness my father turning around in his seat with a look of triumph. But this was to be short-lived. As he witnessed a 40-foot column of shit water and debris being propelled vertically by the impeller now running at maximum output.

• 2:18:11November Kelly?

  Again, had some takeout.

• 2:18:14Speaker 03

  Honestly, my eyes earlier today, it was like this for me.

• 2:18:18Justin Roczniak?

  With dawning horror, he realized what goes up must come down.

• 2:18:26Justin Roczniak?

  And thanks to the prevailing wind, he was directly in the landing zone. He killed the engine. But it was too late.

• 2:18:36November Kelly?

  It's a world of shit and him without an umbrella.

• 2:18:39Justin Roczniak?

  Quickly coated head to toe in liquefied sheep manure, bits of rotten straw and other barnyard horrors.

• 2:18:54Justin Roczniak?

  After recovering my composure, I helped him hose off before he went inside to shower. And lesson was learned. We went back to cleaning the stalls the old fashioned way.

• 2:19:10November Kelly?

  Work harder, not smarter.

• 2:19:13Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, thank you all for keeping me entertained during my long commute and keep up the good work from Tyler.

• 2:19:21Justin Roczniak?

  And BS, I worked on the blue caboose VW, hold on VW XX800 and can tell you that the train commissars are delightful people when they're off duty.

• 2:19:37Justin Roczniak?

  It's down here. That's the, uh, that's the people who, um, um, what's the word? What's the word for summarily execute you? If you, um, fuck with the nuclear weapons. Anyway. Yeah. So.

• 2:19:54Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, don't, don't fuck around with shit, I guess, is the lesson from that one.

• 2:20:01Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:02November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:02Liam McAnderson?

  Just scoop it. Just scoop.

• 2:20:04Speaker 03

  We've been scooping it for millennia.

• 2:20:06Liam McAnderson?

  Ross, for God's sakes, play the outro.

• 2:20:08Justin Roczniak?

  Hold on, I, I, I'm.

• 2:20:09November Kelly?

  End this.

• 2:20:11Justin Roczniak?

  Hold on, it's, uh, uh, uh. It's this one.

• 2:20:19Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 2:20:20November Kelly?

  Josh, if the people want more Josh.

• 2:20:25Speaker 03

  There are two shows that I co-host. One of them is called The Worst of All Possible Worlds. We talk about media and media narratives. Uh, every week we do a different piece of media and we have had.

• 2:20:35November Kelly?

  Wow.

• 2:20:36Speaker 03

  November Kelly on our show numerous times.

• 2:20:39Justin Roczniak?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:20:39November Kelly?

  It's true. I was more, I was more awake.

• 2:20:42Speaker 03

  We've had Justin Roczniak on our show multiple times, including quite recently to talk about, uh, trading, trading places.

• 2:20:49Justin Roczniak?

  Trading places. Yeah. Fantastic film. Uh.

• 2:20:53November Kelly?

  Bingo.

• 2:20:53Speaker 03

  And, uh, I also co-host a podcast called Ill-Conceived. It's about natalism, which is the ideology that sees declining birth rates as the most important problem facing our world right now, which is not our position, but it is a position we're interested in interrogating. So you can listen to either of these fantastic podcasts in your favorite podcast client. And thank you all so much for having me on the show. I always love talking about anything to do with the great state of Michigan, especially just how fucked up the Ambassador Bridge is.

• 2:21:21November Kelly?

  Our pleasure. Also, if you've made it this far, I have a new podcast. It's called Be Gay Solve Crimes. It's me, two other transphobes, one of whom is me in Malta, talking about dyslexic fiction and why it's a trans thing to like. It's really good. Be Gay Solve Crimes.

• 2:21:36Justin Roczniak?

  Listen to, listen to Worst of All Possible Worlds and Ilconceived and Be Gay Solve Crimes. And what else do we got? Ah shit, there's a lot.

• 2:21:47Liam McAnderson?

  Talk your shit.

• 2:21:48November Kelly?

  No gods, no mares, trashy shit, no response.

• 2:21:55November Kelly?

  10,000 losses.

• 2:21:56Liam McAnderson?

  End this.

• 2:21:59Justin Roczniak?

  Our next episode.

• 2:22:01November Kelly?

  The voice is in my head all the time.

• 2:22:03Justin Roczniak?

  Our next episode will be on Chernobyl.

• 2:22:04Liam McAnderson?

  Wow, how about that?

• 2:22:06Justin Roczniak?

  I, I, amazing. Does anyone have any commercials before we go, even though we already just did them?

• 2:22:11Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck you.

• 2:22:11November Kelly?

  We did the commercials. We did the commercials. Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.

• 2:22:19Justin Roczniak?

  How do I end this?

• 2:22:20Liam McAnderson?

  I'm gonna kill you with my bare hands.